Origin Story
by Worldmaker
Summary: Xander Harris finds himself in a world he only thought existed in comic books, forced to play a role in that world he never saw. A Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Marvel Comics Crossover. Rated M for later scenes of sexuality.
1. Orbital Decay

**Orbital Decay**

xxxXXXxxx

"_When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death, then there is heroism." – Robert Green Ingersoll_

xxxXXXxxx

Senior Airman David Keller blinked, then blinked again. Almost casually, he rubbed at his eyes, hating the fact that he felt as tired as he did. It wasn't fair... no matter how much sleep he got, he still felt tired during the overnight. His body just wasn't adjusting. But he was damned if he would fall asleep on the job before he reached the end of the week.

The weekend was the Holy Grail. He had a week of leave coming, and a plane to catch back down to Tampa where he belonged. Keller loved his job, of course. Running a FARLOOK radar station as part of NORAD's "shield of the sky" against incoming missiles was important, and was fun too. It was just technical enough to be interesting, and just simple enough to not need a huge brain and a PhD.

Keller caught himself yawning and berated himself, only to immediately yawn again. It was during this second yawn that a while circle, about the size of a grain of rice, popped up on his board out of nowhere. His computer, which "thought" infinitely faster than he did, immediately labeled it CONTACT 001-000X. His first thought was, "oh shit." His second thought was to immediately call the duty officer. But the 000X caught his attention. The computer apparently didn't recognize the object by its radar return, which was odd.

He hit the comm-button on his headset and, finally managing to conquer his nerves, called out his readings. "Control, station four."

The voice of the duty officer, Lieutenant Pye, came back to him almost immediately. "Go four."

"Ma'am, I have a possible re-entry event. If I'm reading this right, its at 58.351422 by 134.511579, altitude. Thirty-five kilometers and falling fast." Keller tapped some commands into his board, asking the computer for a confirmation. As part of NORAD's arctic screen, the young airman was responsible for detecting missiles coming at the United States over the arctic icecap. "Contact logged at..." the airman glanced at the time readout in the corner of his screen. "Make that logged at 0241 hours."

"If you're reading it right, airman? What do you mean, if you're reading that right?" Keller heard the Lieutenant's voice both in his headset and from outside, telling him that she was approaching his station. He shoved his earphones off of his ear so he could avoid the inevitable echo.

"Its not precisely reading like a missile, ma'am. I'm getting a soft return." As Lieutenant Pye leaned over his shoulder to look for herself, he pointed. "See? Its sort of reading like one of those stealth bombers reads when its flying with its bomb bay doors open."

The lieutenant nodded, but couldn't resist adding, "And just how do you know what that looks like on a radar screen, airman?"

"Ask me no questions, ma'am, I'll tell you no lies." It was an old joke. The people who manned the anti-missile radar systems loved to rub the fact that they could detect stealth aircraft in the faces of the pilots who flew those aircraft. Smug bastards, the bunch of them.

Pye straightened, still staring at the radar screen. "Okay... well, let's look into this, then." She pushed the microphone connected to the earphones she had around her neck closer to her mouth and spoke. "Sergeant Baker, what do we have for launch detection? I didn't hear any alarms before this sighting." The pair of them watched as the contact fell in an arc. "Keller, is that a ballistic arc?"

Keller nodded. "Yes, ma'am. It doesn't seem to be course correcting. I think its in free fall, whatever it is. Completely unguided. And its juking just a bit, probably from the winds at that elevation." He shrugged. "Maybe its not aerodynamic."

"An non-aerodynamic missile that reads as a stealth aircraft? Anything's possible, but that's a bit out there, don't you think?" Pye spoke into the microphone again. "Someone get central command on the line and see what they make of this. And we need to call NASA... maybe its just a piece of junk that didn't burn up on reentry.

Sergeant Baker's voice sounded in their headsets. "Control, station fourteen."

"Go fourteen. What do y'got?"

"No launch detection. Nothing on the alerts. As far as everyone else is concerned, no launches. Should we go to alert?"

"Put us at alert one, Baker. Start the count. Keller, put it up on the big board."

"Yes, ma'am, the count has started," came the reply.

"How long we got, Keller?" She watched the object on the big board. A red line preceded it to its estimated location of impact; a white line indicated its incoming plot.

"Just over... three and a half minutes until impact, ma'am. Computer tracking says that unless it changes course its gonna hit somewhere close to the Silver Island Mountains, in Utah. That's near the Bonneville Salt Flats. Its a huge open area, ma'am. Uninhabited area, except for the gear-heads who go there to race their cars on the flats. Shouldn't be any casualties when it hits, which should be in about three more minutes."

xxxXXXxxx

Lieutenant Pye and Airman Keller were still conferring five minutes later when the door into the theater opened and both Captain Tillend, Pye's immediate successor, and Colonel Ball, the commander of the post, stormed in. Both had frowns on their faces, though whether it was from the contact or the fact that the duty NCO had called them in at 2 in the morning was anybody's guess.

The colonel walked over to the control station and stood, staring up at the big board. The new contact's path was plotted, and as expected it had hit somewhere near Bonneville in the Silver Island Mountains. The impact site had a blinking yellow circle around it, indicating a kinetic impact with no radiological traces detected.

"Okay, Lieutenant, what do you have?"

"Sir, thank you for coming in. At 0241 a re-entry event occurred. The RO was apparently on a ballistic track and was experiencing course interference from the wind. That interference was not corrected, making me think that the object was unguided. Given the strength of the radar return, I'd guess that the object was either very small, or non-reflective, by which I mean it wasn't made of metal or dense stone. That's my best guess from the readings we were receiving."

Captain Tillend couldn't help himself, apparently. "Your best guess, Lieutenant Pye? You're not paid to guess. Stick to what you can prove."

Colonel Ball glared at the captain, then turned his attention back to the big board, where it had been since he walked in. "So you think this was maybe a meteor that made it through a reentry burn, then?"

Lieutenant Pye nodded . "Yes, sir, that's correct. Or perhaps some sort of spacecraft debris. Lord knows there's enough of that hanging around in orbit."

"Yes, thank, you, Lieutenant, we know. Anything else?" Colonel Ball was fairly easy going, but he didn't need to hear about a junior officer's opinions of space-trash.

I tasked a couple of SIDELOOKS and the silhouette we received simply was too irregular to be a missile. Honestly, it looked more like one of the old sputnik satellites, or a really strangely shaped table." She held up her hands before either of the other officers could say anything. "And no, I don't think it was a sputnik or a table, sir... I'm just making a comparison. According to the SIDELOOKS, the object was between a meter and half to two meters long, roughly a meter in diameter, and was semi-permeable to the radar. SIDELOOK pictures gave me the impression that the object had a loose edge that was flapping in the wind. Again, I'm not saying that it was, just that it looked like it did."

"Flapping in the wind. Hmm. Colonel Ball thought for a moment. "Could this 'flapping edge' of yours have been a parachute of some kind that had become fouled?"

"No sir, I don't believe so. The 'flapping edge' if you will just wasn't that long. To use a parachute from that height, it would have to be a dozen meters across, and this thin was maybe half a meter. No, sir, not a 'chute, sir."

Colonel Ball had no response to this, so he only nodded. Captain Tillend felt it was a good time to step in, so he did. "Radiologicals?"

Lieutenant Pye nodded. "We checked sir, using that new toy the people from Stark installed last month. Negative. No radiological feedback at all." She glanced down at her clipboard, where she had been making notes since the contact was spotted. "There was one thing weird. Thermal imaging showed that while it was hot, it cooler than any other object we've ever recorded reentering the atmosphere."

"Explain that, please?" Captain Tillend asked.

"Well, sir," Pye began, "we all know that any object reentering the Earth's atmosphere get heated up a couple of thousand degrees from atmospheric friction, and stay that way for a while after they impact. This object read as hot at first, but it rapidly cooled as it fell. I don't know where the radiant heat was going, but the thermals simply weren't picking it up. That much heat radiating off of an object should have left detectable vapor trails in the infrared, but no such luck.

Colonel Ball sighed. "Okay... good work, Lieutenant Pye. I'm going to get on the horn to General Markham and see if we can't get a team spun up out of Mountain View. Get them to take a look at the impact site and confirm its a meteor after all."

xxxXXXxxx

"Hotel 99, this is Hotel Lead. I read us about a klick out from where our target came down." Major Doyle Duffy curved his HH60-G Pave Hawk to the left, sending it in a counter-clockwise circle, all the while checking the ground with radar and his night scope. It had taken the helicopters nearly twenty minutes to reach the area, and they'd been searching for another ten. So far, nothing unusual had shown up except for the high-altitude contrail left by the object as it fell. The long, white cloud ended a good 40,000 feet above the ground, and was only just now diffusing because of the wind. And it was still slightly glowing from the heat of the rock's passage. No doubt it would be causing conspiracy theories about chem-trails, were anyone able to get pictures of it. All Duffy knew was that it looked pretty. He was always of the opinion that the more pretty there was in the world, the better. "Have you spotted anything yet?"

The voice of Lieutenant Mickelson, the pilot of the other helicopter, came back over his radio. "No sir, nothing yet. I'm curing the other way and will meet you in the middle."

Duffy nodded, knowing that the other chopper pilot couldn't see it, and smiling at his second, Lieutenant Jamie Hall, who was sitting to his right. The lieutenant rolled her eyes at the major, but did return the grin. "Roger," Duffy responded. "Keep an eye out for anything unusual. According to NORAD, a meteor or something hit around here, and they want us to confirm it."

"Did they tell us why we're hunting for a rock, sir?" Hall asked him.

"Nope. We are but mushrooms in this." Duffy smiled again at the younger officer. "Kept in the dark. Fed a steady stream of bullshit."

Lieutenant Hall grimaced. "Right. This is why I joined the Air Force, sir. So I could look for rocks in the middle of the night."

Duffy completed his turn. The Pave Hawk was designed for search and rescue operations, so it was just possible that the rock had hit something when it came screaming out of the sky. Nobody knew yet. "Well, Jamie, it could always be worse. We could be doing this in Afghanistan. Or Iraq, heaven forfend."

Jamie's mouth tightened into a bow. "Is forfend even a word?"

Duffy opened his mouth to reply, but from the shadows behind them a deeper male voice intruded. "We're flying over a desert made of salt crystals. The only thing making Afghanistan worse are the people that would be shooting at us. And even then... I'd hate to walk home from a crash over this shit." Technical Sergeant Aaron Cruz was the EMT for the flight, along with his counterpart in the other helicopter, Master Sergeant Eddie Buck. Their orders didn't mention the possibility of casualties, but Major Duffy had learned to never leave home without your medic.

"99, I'm starting my second turn." Duffy straightened the aircraft out, extending its line by a hundred meters, then started a second turn. "Roger, second turn." was the only reply.

He'd only just begun the turn when his copilot tapped him on the arm. "Sir, I got flashing lights just above the horizon, right over there. Blue and red. Police cruiser and a couple of fire trucks, I think."

Duffy glanced over, then nodded. "Nice. Let's go take a look." He radioed the other chopper, which promptly fell back into formation with him, and the two aircraft did a careful fly-over of the emergency vehicles. It was, it turned out, a police cruiser, a firetruck, and an ambulance, all heading up a dirt path into the Silver Islands.

"Well... wonder where they're going at this time of the morning?" Hall asked, making it obvious that she had no doubt in her mind where the civilian authorities were headed. She looked over to her pilot. "Should we ask them, sir?"

"What an excellent idea, Lieutenant." Duffy pushed a couple of buttons on his radio, switching it to the standard civilian emergency channel. "Can you find me a call-sign, Jaimee? Something on their chassis, maybe? I'd hate to just call them 'Hey, you emergency guys'." He pulled the flight to the right of the road, and stayed high enough so as to not spook the first responders.

There was a smattering of chatter on the radio that made it seem like none of them had picked up on the helicopters yet. That would change in a hurry... helicopters were not quiet. And those designed, as these two were, to be used to assist in disaster relief were even louder. All the better for stranded survivors to hear and, hopefully, signal. The sound of the helicopter's rotors were as much a part of the "rescue equipment" as the MRE's, blankets, and medical equipment they kept on board.

The major listened to the chatter, hoping to catch a call-sign from one of the vehicles. "Whatever happened to the days when their call signs were painted on the roof, like in _Adam-12_," he muttered to himself.

"Adam what?" His co-pilot gave him a quizzical look. "What's an Adam-12?"

Duffy just sighed, suddenly feeling old. And he wasn't that old. "There was this old TV show. Used to come on as re-runs back in the 70s when I was a kid. Cop show. They'd have their call-sign painted on their roof so the guys in the helicopters would know who was who. Wait... okay, got it." It took him a moment to realize that someone on the radio had finally used a call-sign. Duffy waited until the channel was clear, and then broke in. "Rescue V-D 08. this is US Air Force Hotel Flight, 99 and 58. 58 actual speaking. We're out of Mountain Home and have been tasked to render all assistance we can to the first responders in the area. How can we help, over?" There was a moment of silence as the men in the vehicles below him registered his presence.

"Uh... roger 58. This is Kilo Lima 14. We'll be glad to take any help you can give us. There's a small group of cabins up here. Most are empty except during the hunting seasons, but we do have a small population of home-industry silver miners who are up here year round. Um... given the, uh... the meteor and all, and how far it was to get here, someone figured we should check on them just in case."

"Roger, 14. Understood. We'll fly ahead of you and and see what we can see." He switched back to regular frequencies. "99, Hotel lead. Let's get ahead of the first responders and see if they know where they're going."

The other pilot responded, and the two helicopters burst forward.

xxxXXXxxx

Lieutenant Mickelson stared at what his copilot was pointing at, then nodded toward the spotlight. Lieutenant Allan Bezdecheck, the copilot in question, nodded back, then hit the spot. A circle as bright as daylight suddenly appeared on the ground, and it moved as Bezdecheck manipulated the controls. Finally, the circle centered on a crater.

"Hotel lead, this is Hotel 99. We found the impact site." Bezdecheck widened the focus on the light. While the brightness lessened slightly, the projected spot of brightness got wider. "Looks like an impact crater all right... maybe eight meters across and looks like... hold one, lead." Bezdecheck turned to Mickelson. "You seeing this John?"

Mickelson held the helicopter as motionless as possible as it hovered over the crater. "Yeah, I'm seeing it, Al. I'm seeing it." The pilot turned toward the back of the helicopter, where the EMT seemed to be drowsing. "Hey, Buck. You're up. We have a casualty, looks like." He heard Bezdecheck begin to describe what they had found to the lead pilot in Hotel 58.

The EMT, Senior Airman Eddie Buck, jerked awake, nodded once, and then began assembling his kit. "What do we got, boss?"

"Looks like we got a single casualty... looks female. Can't tell if she's dead or just unconscious, but... well, it's weird, Eddie. She was either hit by the meteor, in which case I don't think she'll be walking away from this, or else she was the meteor, in which case she ain't gonna walk away from this. Either way..."

Buck's eyes widened, and he paused in the middle of getting his kit together. "Okay, yeah, that's weird. Give me five seconds on the drop, sir."

Mickelson nodded, more to himself than to his medic, and said, "Five seconds, roger. Al, check with Duffy and let him know that Buck's ready to go. And call that ambulance and let them know we found something. They should only be a couple of minutes out by now." His copilot nodded without pausing in his description of the crater, the area surrounding the crater, or the woman who lay at the crater's bottom.

xxxXXXxxx

The medics hit the ground almost simultaneously. They unhooked themselves from their respective rappel line, which was retracted into the hovering aircraft. They both did an initial gear check, then gave the okay sign to their pilots. Only then did they turn to acknowledge each other and make their way down the crater.

The crater wasn't particularly steep, which helped their climb down. The woman was definitely at the crater's low point. As the higher ranked medic, Cruz took the lead in reporting back to his pilot. "Okay, Major, we've got a Caucasian female, blonde, anywhere between sixteen and twenty, I'd say. Hard to tell how tall she is what with her lying down, but she looks at least as tall as I am. Muscular, though. She looks like an athlete."

Buck noted the abrasions and cuts on the woman's face, and the obvious bruising on her legs. He couldn't tell if she had any broken bones from how she was positioned, but there was one thing he could check immediately. He gently probed just under her jawline with a couple of fingers, looking for her pulse. He couldn't find one right away, so he repositioned his fingers. At first, he thought she had bought the farm, but eventually he found it. Very, very faint. "Aaron, I got a pulse. Whatever happened to her, she's still alive." He checked for signs of breathing, and for a moment was sort of caught out being male. The woman was, to put it crudely, massively mammalian, and the leotard she was dressed in had torn open to the point that one of her rather noteworthy breasts rather was exposed.

He shook himself suddenly. _What the hell am I doing?_ He resumed his chef for signs of breathing, but didn't find any. He called to the EMT, who was still pulling things out of the kit. "Buck grab a bag, she's not breathing!" With that, he bent over her, straightened her head slightly, took a deep breath, and expelled it into her mouth.

To Cruz, it felt like he was trying to fill an oxygen tank using nothing more than his own lung-power. He chest hadn't budged when he breathed for her. Regardless, he did it again, pausing only a moment to motion Buck toward her so he could start chest compressions. As Cruz sat up to get a bigger inhale, he noted that Buck was putting his full weight on her chest and yet wasn't able to budge her. He shook his head, then continued the mouth-to-mouth. After four breaths, something changed. He sat up to take another deep breath when he noticed her inhale, very slowly. Just as slowly, the woman let it out.

Puzzled, he stopped the mouth to mouth resuscitation. He watched, and after a couple of minutes she did it again. "Eddie...", Cruz said.

The other man stopped his fruitless attempt to compress the woman's chest and glanced at the senior EMT. "Yeah, Aaron?"

"She's breathing... but its slow and shallow. Time this with me." The two of them watched the second hand go around nearly three times before the woman took another breath. It stunned them to the point that neither noticed when the first responders pulled up.

xxxXXXxxx

The police officer looked at Aaron Cruz as if the medic had just burst into flame. "Wait a second, fly-boy..." Oh, he did not just do that. Not even the pilots in the Air Force appreciated being called "fly-boy." The officer wasn't even trying to be understanding or polite. "You're telling me she fell out of the sky and hit so hard she caused this crater. She's breathing only once every three or four minutes, and has a pulse that's barely detectable?"

Cruz just nodded. "Yes, that's what I'm saying. Your own medics can barely get a blip from her on their EKG, and unless you're looking, you can't tell she's breathing at all."

The policeman just leered at that. "Yeah, and with tits like those, I'm sure you were taking your time looking, right?"

Cruz was suddenly in the man's face. "You secure that shit, officer." He pointed toward the crater, just to get his point home. "We don't know who she is, but that woman is a human being and she's hurt. As such, she deserves our respect and our care and she doesn't deserve your pathetic, creepy eyes all over her. Do you understand me?"

The officer's eyes narrowed. "You'd better step back right now, son, or else I may just have to cuff you for attempted assault on a law enforcement officer."

"Try it. See what happens." Cruz stared into the officer's eyes, hoping the man would get the hint.

The officer just smirked at Cruz. "Fine. I'll be nice to the damned mutie girl."

"You don't know she's a mutant." Cruz started to reply at length, but the cop just cut him off.

"Oh my ass. She fell out of the sky and landed like a missile and didn't die? I'd say that qualifies. I've already talked to my Captain, and he's calling SHIELD. He's going to have them meet your crew at whichever Salt Lake hospital you take that mutie girl to, and they'll be putting her in prison where she belongs." The cop's smirk almost earned him a punch in the chops just on general principle. If there was one thing Cruz hated, it was a bigot, even if he wasn't too fond of the group being bigoted against.

Giving the officer up as a bad job, he turned back to the rescue effort and walked back to the crater's edge. Lieutenant Mickelson and Major Duffy had both landed their helicopters, and were moving a gurney carefully down the side of the crater.

Buck was directing things. To anyone outside of the military, it might have been strange that the lowest ranked person in the flight was now giving orders, but it didn't matter. This was a medical situation, and Buck was in charge of the move while Cruz went to talk to the cop; and in medical situations, privates could get away with ordering generals around... assuming the general wasn't a complete asshole.

Duffy had seen Cruz's face as the senior medic approached. "Problem?" he asked. The look on Cruz's face said it all. "I take it the officer said something untoward?"

"Man has a hard-on for tossing mutants in prison, and figures she's a mutant. Plus, he made a rude remark about her... um... " Cruz held his hands up in front of his chest for a second, causing Duffy to grin slightly. Cruz dropped his hands and shrugged. "Guy says his Captain's already called SHIELD and that they're likely to meet us whatever hospital we end up shipping her to."

"University Medical Center in Salt Lake. Its got to be the closest critical care facility to us right now. Anyway..." Duffy took a deep breath. "Right. Well, I don't know if she's a mutant, but I can say with absolute certainty that she is most obviously a girl."

That caused the rest of them to smile. Even Jamiee Hall, the lone woman, who added, "Wonder what store she bought those from."

Buck laughed loudly at that, and when everyone looked at him he said, "Um... well... when I was trying CPR on her... I think those are real, Lieutenant."

Hall snorted. "Really?" she asked? "I don't know whether to pity her or envy her."

Talk ceased when the gurney hit the bottom of the crater. The crew maneuvered it until it was as flat and straight next to the victim as possible, the pilot intentionally pulled out one of the bright orange rescue blankets out of the kit and covered her with it.

Cruz looked to Buck, who merely waved him forward. "Okay," Cruz began. "Buck get her feet, I'll get her shoulders. Major, if you and Lieutenant Bezdecheck will steady the gurney, we can get her moved." With that he stooped, being careful to position himself so he was lifting with his legs. Buck put his arms just beneath her calves. The two nodded to each other, and Cruz counted. "One... two... three..." and he lifted.

At least he tried to. The woman hadn't moved, and Cruz almost dropped her. The two medics stopped and straightened. "Wow." Eddie Buck looked down at her, then back up to Cruz. "What do you think, Aaron?"

"What's the matter?" Lieutenant Mickelson asked.

"I dunno, Eddie. Five hundred? Maybe six hundred?" Cruz glanced at the Lieutenant and answered his question. "She's too heavy for us to move. She's got to weigh close to five hundred pounds, sir. We're going to need some cables and a rig."

xxxXXXxxx

For Alexander Lavelle Harris, late of Sunnydale, California, the night had been strange, and terrifying, terminating in a crater in the Utah desert, having fallen farther than he'd ever experienced before, and landing harder than anyone had a right to survive.

He's been surprised to find himself falling. But even worse than that, he'd been surprised to find himself so far up in the first place. He was, he suddenly realized with a finality and a fatalism that only a veteran of Sunnydale could hold, that he was high enough above the earth to see the planet's curvature. Naturally enough, he opened his mouth and screamed like a little girl.

Not that he could hear himself. Apparently there wasn't enough air around him to carry the sound yet. There was, however, enough to cause the reentry friction. The air around him literally caught fire from the heat of his passage through it. And this brought on his second shock of the night. He didn't burn. He could feel a mild warmth, but not the multiple thousands of degrees that tumbling through the atmosphere at sub-orbital speeds should have caused.

But still, he screamed. He couldn't remember how he got there, or what had happened. The last thing he remembered was escorting a bunch of kids door-to-door. Acting like a volunteer by taking the kids trick-or-treating. And the costume... the girl's costume with the blonde wig and the fake gag breasts that Cordelia had forced him into after he lost the bet. He was still wearing it, but he was so involved in the fact that he was falling to his death that he never noticed. Neither did he notice that it fit him a lot better now than it had while he was trick-or-treating. He couldn't remember the entire night. He remembered talking to Buffy, and then his vision graying out, and then he was here, in the high atmosphere, falling uncontrollably.

He had vague memories of protecting a screaming woman and a girl in a cat costume from being attacked by monsters, including a vague memory of a tall, blonde man turning into a monster in front of his eyes, but he couldn't concentrate on it. Not when the ground was rushing toward him like it was.

The sound of the wind had become almost deafening, but he could still hear himself scream. Below him was a vast expanse of white, and at first he thought he was falling into snow; it took him a moment to realize it was a desert, and he was heading toward a range of low mountains. Not that it mattered... at this height, he would be hitting with the force of a bomb. He'd be dead before he knew he hit. At least there was that.

He had time to start praying... to God, Jesus, Mohammed, Vishnu... hell, he even tried a quick prayer to Joe Pesci... when he barreled into the side of a mountain at nearly twice the speed of sound.

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note: **This story was inspired by "A New World in My View" by P.H. Wise. Some background plot elements have been borrowed from that story. Out of everything else, if you recognize it, its probably either Mutant Enemy's toy, Marvel Comics' toy, or else DC Comics' toy.


	2. And Now Something Completely Different

**And Now For Something Completely Different**

xxxXXXxxx

_Heroes aren't heroes because of what they do. They are heroes because they show all of us that one person, just one person, can make a difference. - Marc Morial_

xxxXXXxxx

**Two Days After Impact**:

"Okay, so what do we know about her?" Larry Understone, currently the most senior agent SHIELD had in Salt Lake City, Utah, turned to the man beside him, eyebrow raised in curiosity. The man in question, Agent Bartolomeo Copella, merely shrugged his shoulders in return.

The mystery woman, found in a crater, had been transported by the Air Force's search and rescue helicopter to University Medical Center's critical care center. The doctors there had hooked her up to all sorts of medical gizmos and tubes and whiz-bangs that Understone, who held a Bachelor's in Political Science and a Juris Doctorate, would never be able to describe much less understand. And when SHIELD came to claim this obviously metahuman woman, the doctors were all very, very confused and all too happy to hand her over. So here she lay, in a secret SHIELD-controlled medical center, hidden on the top three floors of the Lexington Street Bank in Manhattan. And after two days of examinations and checks, the doctors here were apparently just as confused.

"Not as much as we should know, boss. This woman is an enigma wrapped in a very pretty mystery." Copella opened the file in his hands and read from the summary sheet. "No identification on her when she was found. Not a surprise given that she was basically wearing boots, gloves, a bathing suit, and a cape. Her finger -"

"A cape?" Understone couldn't help but interrupt at this point. "Who wears a cape these days other than Thor and that maniac living above Stark Tower?"

Copella was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Um... Magneto. Drax the Destroyer... uh... that cold-hearted witch up at the Xavier Institute... what's her name... Emma something. Though I think hers is less of a cape and more of a stole, or a drape, or whatever you call those fur things. Oh! That lunatic Captain Ultra used to wear one before he shot himself. And then there was..."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Continue." Understone rolled his eyes, all the while grinning like a madman. He and Copella got along like gangbusters.

"Interesting thing about the costume she was in... the medics on site tried to cut it off of her, as with standard SOP, and couldn't. Their scissors bent instead of cutting the cloth, at least until one of them pulled the costume away from her body to get a better grip, and it cut like a dream. One of the eggheads here figures she's got some sort of force field going just over her skin."

"Well, that's interesting... do we have any actual proof, though?" Understone didn't want speculation at this point in the case.

"Um... no, no proof. Just a guess. Anyway, we rolled her prints and came back with nothing. Which doesn't mean much other than no one's ever done a security background check on her, she's never been in the military or any government job, she's never been convicted of a crime, and she's never been a bonded child-care provider."

"Also means she's an unregistered metahuman, and dressed like it was she was trying to be a superhero. Or worse, a supervillain. They're going to put her in the Gulag." Understone's entire manner soured. He hated the Gulag. Hated it with a passion.

Copella nodded, knowing his boss's attitudes. He returned to the file. "Blonde and blue. Pupils are fixed and unresponsive, so the doctors are thinking concussion. Which wouldn't surprise me given that she was either hit by a meteor or was one. She's just a hair over six feet tall and she weighs five hundred and forty one pounds. Big girl. He looked up a moment and grinned in that sly way he had. In more ways than one, you'll notice. As far as anyone can tell, those are real, by the way."

That caused Understone to whistle with incredulity. "I hope she's got a good chiropractor. Her back must be killing her."

"No doubt. Turns out, she's a 40-E." Copella was barely keeping his face straight.

This time when Understone rolled his eyes, it wasn't out of humor but out of exasperation and anger. It was one thing to make funny remarks when it was just the two of them, but how the hell did... no, it didn't matter. "Can you explain to me, Agent Copella, why on Earth someone here felt the need to actually find that out? Can you even pronounce the words 'civil rights violation'?"

All humor was gone from Copella's face in an instant. "Right, yes... you got it, boss. I'll talk to whomever did that little test and make sure they know that we're very, very angry with them."

"I want whoever did that to be gone by tomorrow. I don't care if its the head of the medical center, they are done, you got me?"

"Sure, boss. Resignation will be on your desk in the morning." Copella was sheepish, but quickly recovered. "She's... um... also apparently a natural blonde."

"Oh lord, don't tell me..." Understone rubbed his forehead with his hand wishing the sudden headache he had would either go away, or increase to the point of killing him.

"And..." Copella coughted, almost embarassed at going on with the report. "And... um... apparently a virgin."

Understone's headache exploded. He walked himself to the wall and started pounding his head into it. "How in the world... WHY in the world..."

"Well, she's unconscious, and looks to be for a while, so one of the nurses put in a Foley. While she was doing that, she noticed that our subject is... um... intact. Nothing prurient about it."

"Christ on a crutch, Bart..." Understone shook his head, trying to clear the image. "Okay, let's move on. We got anything on her age or where she's from? Dental work? Tattoos? Identifying marks of any kind?"

"No tattoos, no scars anyone can find. We had a forensic dentist in here yesterday and he says that her wisdom teeth haven't come in yet, so he figures she's anywhere between fifteen years old and twenty. He also says that her teeth shows absolutely no sign of wear, tear, or repair. In his words, he doubts she's ever seen a dentist in her life."

Understone was quiet a moment, thinking. "By her facial structure, I'm inclined to think more the former than the latter, Bart." Once again, Understone stopped talking to think. "So it looks like she's just a kid. Maybe she's a mutant whose power just got turned on, and in the activation she turned into an invulnerable amazon? Understone shook his head, trying not to speculate given that he'd asked Copella not to. What else we got on her?"

"That's about it, boss." Copella scanned the rest of the summary. "No blood type... the doctors can't get a needle into her skin. They tried taking a sample from her mouth. Not only did the needle not penetrate, but they apparently triggered some reflext and her mouth snapped shut. Scared the doctor half to death, 'cause she bit the needle clean through and almost caught his fingers." Copella stopped to look quickly at Understone, whose eyes carried the question. "Its no big. We gave him a couple of days off. He did suggest we might want to consider an adamantium scalpel. I've contacted Stark."

Understone nodded, and asked, "How about DNA?"

"Inconclusive. Naturally tissue samples are impossible for the same reasons they haven't been able to get a blood type. They swabbed the inside of her cheek and recovered some shed cells, but the cells themselves are impervious to every DNA typing technique they've tried."

This made Understone laugh. "That makes sense. Why should her cells be any less invulnerable. Missing persons?"

"Nothing. So she's either got no one to report her missing, or no one's bothered." Copella closed the folder and turned to the windows, staring at their subject.

"Or she's not missing. Or she's been missing so long her file's gone dead." Understone's mouth twitched. He wasn't a big fan of the process this girl was about to experience. The entire thing smacked of tyranical oppression. But it wasn't his job to question his orders. "As dense as she is, she's bound to be super-strong. Do they have her under restraint?"

"Oh, yeah, boss, sorry, forgot about that. The cuffs she's in are based on those things the Mad Thinker used against the Fantastic Four that one time. Its padded so it won't chafe, and reinforced with secondary adamantium. She's not going anywhere, no matter how strong she is." Copella's smile was the smug grin of someone who knew he'd won a trifecta bet at the track.

"Good. Good. That's good." Understone glanced quickly at Copella. "By the way, Bart... just asking. Nothing really important at all. But did anyone reinforce the bed? I have a sudden image in my head of her running down the hospital's corridor, trying to get away, shacked with invulnerable handcuffs to a broken off chunk of the hospital bed."

To Understone, the fallen look on Bart Copella's face was priceless.

xxxXXXxxx

Xander dreamed.

He'd slumped over to where Willow and Buffy were talking, trying hard not to project just how angry and humiliated he was feeling. But a bet was a bet, and he wasn't going to let Cordelia get the better of him, even while she was getting the better of him.

"Hey, Xan-man!" Buffy's smile was bright and uplifting and usually Xander had no problem with using her smiles to feel a bit better about himself. Deep inside, he knew that he had no chance with her at all, but every time she smiled at him, he always felt that maybe, sometime, somewhere, he might still be able to...

But no. He was only fooling himself and he knew it. Still, other than Willow, who he loved like a sister and whom he pretended to never notice loved him a bit not like a brother, if you know what he means and he thinks that you do, Buffy was the only girl who ever smiled at him with anything other than pity or ridicule. Not even his drunk bitch mother smiled at him like that.

So he'd take it where he could.

"So... what did you get?" Before he could resist Buffy had the bag out of his hands and open. She stared, open-mouthed, at the white leotard, the boots, the gloves, and the belt. But then she had to go and take the gag boobs out of the bag. He could feel his face turn lava red, as red as Willow's hair.

"Cordelia's idea of a joke. You see, we had this bet, and if I won, I got to pick her costume, and if she won, she got to pick mine. So Cordelia was she of the winning, and I am he of the utter humilation."

"Who's this supposed to be, anyway?" Willow asked, turning the gag butt over in her hands. She dropped it back into the bag, only to withdraw the blonde wig.

"Power Girl." The girls responded to this revelation with nothing but a blank look. "You know... Power Girl? Superman's cousin? Kryptonian maid of might? She of the really huge..." he began to hold his hands out in front of his chest, and Buffy's expession immediately turned dark and menacing. "Um... tracts of land...?" Xander finished weakly.

Both Buffy and Willow stared at him.

Willow coughed, lightly, and asked, "Isn't Superman's cousin Supergirl? I think I've seen pictures of her. She's got this tight leotard and a headband and this mini-skirt... and I'm going to shut up now." Xander's glower at the words mini-skirt brought her question to an end.

"Superman's other cousin." Buffy still looked at him as if she wanted to strangle him. "Yeah, I know," Xander sighed. "Cordelia bought it for me. Its her fault."

"You don't have to do this, Xander. You don't have to humilate yourself for Cordy's entertainment." Buffy was clearly going to talk to Cordelia sometime soon about this issue. Xander just wished she'd leave it alone. "No, Buffy... I made the bet fair and square, and she's just lucky she's not going out dressed like a Saudi Arabian school-teacher. I'm a man of my word, and I gave my word. So... endless humiliation it is."

I'm still going to talk to her.

Willow touched Xander on the arm. "Why a Saudi Arabian school-teacher?"

"Have you seen the costumes she usually wears? Total slut-o-rama." Xander grinned. "I was going to have her cover up fro her hair to her toes, with only her eyes showing. That'd show her."

"Yeah, that would have been good... if you won." Willow seemed to sadden. "Its too bad you didn't, too. I'm really going to miss you, Xander. Especially around Halloween."

"What do you mean, Wills? I'm not going anywhere." It was only then that Xander noticed that both Buffy and Willow had turned black and white and were beginning to get all fadey, like a picture being projected into too much light. The walls behind them had been replaced by a great white space, that was all lit up like the sun.

"Going to miss you..."

xxxXXXxxx

**Five Months After Impact**:

In the time since he started assisting the Slayer in her duties to defend humanity against the creatures of darkness, Xander Harris had become sort of an expert in waking up suddenly after being mysteriously rendered unconscious. And for a minute or two, the circumstances under which he'd blacked out were mysterious, as he couldn't really remember them.

Instead, he concentrated on the fact that he had a headache that was roughly the size of an oil supertanker. Some vile, cruel person was driving thick, blunt, rusty spikes into his ears and into his eyes. His body felt odd; heavy in ways it shouldn't be heavy; off-balance in ways it shouldn't be off balance, even though he knew he was lying down.

So, because for at least the start he couldn't remember just how he'd been knocked out, and didn't know where he was or what he was doing there, he immediately called to mind the procedure he'd jokingly labeled the "Unconsciousness Protocols" in his head.

Step #1 was pretty easy. Just keep your eyes closed and hope no one notices you're awake while you surreptitiously check out your surroundings. Step #2 was harder: without opening your eyes, use your senses as much as possible to determine where you were.

So Xander kept his eyes shut and simply listened for a moment. The noisy hum of the machinery in the room with him, plus the ear-shattering beeps and doops coming from some of them, punched into his awareness and he fought for a moment to concentrate past them. Almost as quickly as he noticed the hum from the machines in the room, they'd subsided to a dull background sound. He just as quickly picked up the sound of heartbeats, two of them, not that far away. They didn't sound especially fast, so Xander figured that the people were standing still. Concentrating further, he could hear conversations, both innane and technical, going on past the people with the...

'Wait just a cotton-picking minute... he thought to himself. 'What the hell is going on?'

Xander opened his eyes and was immediately blinded. The world was simply too bright. It was awash in strange colors and patterns and for a moment he felt he was going crazy from the input. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, trying to figure out what he was seeing. All of the electronics in the room were glowing red and white and green all at the same time. There was a silver sleet falling through the ceiling of the room. From the flourescent light above him came a veritable rainbow of colors. He looked to the windows on the wall to the right, and the sunlight was breaking apart into so many colors... more colors than Xander had ever remembered seeing. He closed his eyes, almost willing the colors to go away, and when he opened them again everything was back to normal.

Carefully, he tried to move a hand to his eyes to rub at them, and it was then that he discovered he was shackled to the bed. They were very high-tech looking shackles, too, with a row of small green lights following the curve of his wrist. His wrists themselves were surrounded by solid plates of metal a good four inches across. They covered his arms a good third of the way between his wrists and his elbows. The inner surfaces were padded with what looked like sheep-skin, so he couldn't rub himself raw. A pair of silvery cables led from the shackles themselves to a point under the bed.

Casually he tugged a couple of times at the shackles, and the small green lights flickered red for a moment, then settled back to green.

Unbelieveably, it was only then that he noticed his breasts. They were the sort of breasts he used to picture whenever he thought about the skin magazines his father thought were so cleverly hidden in the top drawer of his dresser. At first it didn't connect. It didn't connect at all. Where did these come from?

He managed to slide one of his hands up and over them (and somewhere in side his mind, there arose a secret fear that the girl those were attached to was about to slap him for being so bold) and discovered that they were attached. To him. He had boobs. Big ones. As awkwardly as he could with his hands tied to his side, he pulled the neck of his hospital gown away and peeked, sort of sideways, at his new boobs. His only thought, for the moment, was, 'Wow!' They were a milky shade of cream, like his skin, with wide aureolas and small nipples. And they were gigantic. Stripper boobs. _Playboy Magazine _boob. No... wait... _Hustler Magazine _boobs.

And then it hit him. 'Where the fuck did he get boobs from? How the hell did he get boobs? He was a guy, a guy was supposed to have...' The thought stopped in his head and he went a little gray. With the same awkward movements that let him put his hands to his new breasts, he moved one of his hands down, under his hospital gown, to that place where his legs met his torso.

All the while he'd been secretly afraid of what he was going to find. And indeed, he found precisely what he was hoping he wouldn't find. Or rather, didn't find. Accent on didn't. Something important was missing.

When looking back on the situation, Xander Harris honestly could say that he thought his reaction to finding out he was suddenly a girl was entirely natural and to be expected. Even so, the last thought he had before he fainted was that perhaps he needed to start referring to himself as a 'she' instead of as a 'he.'

xxxXXXxxx

A quiet alarm sounded in the guardroom down the hall from Xander's room. Agent Henry, who had been stuck on monitor duty again for the fifth damned shift, once again wondered who the woman was. He took his feet down from the edge of the desk, laid his magazine (Field and Stream volume 18, #7. The cover-article was _Dove Hunting Ettiquete_; Agent Henry had never gone dove-hunting, and it looked interesting) down, and tapped the comms.

"Joe, this is Cal. Check your primary, would you? We just had something register on her restraints. Might be nothing, but take a look, okay?" Agent Henry waited until he got confirmation from the senior guard standing watch at the door of the only prisoner in the medical facility, and then returned to his article.

It was nothing, of course. She'd been in a coma for close to six months. Henry was willing to put real money on her being a vegetable, if it wouldn't have got him a serious reprimand. He liked this job. It was better than being an FBI agent, which is how he started out. And he knew better than to pull the kind of shit that got you fired on morals and corruption charges. Like that jackass Lawery, who snuck into the girl's room, took a bunch of pictures, and then sold them off to a porn site. Moron. Besides, she was totally jailbait. Nothing ends a law-enforcement officer's career like a conviction for dealing in kiddie porn.

Agent Henry went back to his reading. He was definitely going to try and talk his wife into going dove hunting with him. She might complain at first, but she did that the time he took her fishing for marlin that one time, and in the end she had more fun than he did.

xxxXXXxxx

Agent Joe Dolan acknowledged the alarm notification from Cal Henry and sighed. "Okay, Pat," he said to the other guard. "I'll take a look. Its probably nothing. You stay here." He pulled his access card up from his pocket and swiped it through the lock, then pressed his activation code. The door buzzed quietly and opened.

Dolan stepped into the room, automatically checking the corners and the visible spaces behind all the equipment monitoring the condition of their prisoner. Nothing, as he knew there'd be nothing. No one entered this room except the nurse, once a day, to change the sheets, give their subject a sponge bath, and do a feeding. He'd watched the nurse feed the prisoner once. It was fascinating in a gross sort of way. Stick a tube down the unconscious girl's nose, then carefully squeeze the liquid down it into her stomach.

The girl shifted slightly. Just a little, but a little was enough. And it was different. The girl never shifted herself before. Coma patients just didn't shift like they were sleeping. And he had orders. Anything different was reported immediately. Dolan stepped out of the room, making sure he heard the buzzing click as it closed and locked behind him.

"Hey Cal? Yeah, this is Joe. Call Tuesday and let him know that something's different. I think she's coming around. And let the doc's know. Get a nurse down here."

On the other end, Henry was suddenly a lot more alert sounding than he normally was. "Roger. Did you say she was waking up?"

"Affirmative. I went in and she had shifted her position on her own. I've talked with the nurses enough to know that people in comas don't do that; people who are sleeping do. She's not in a coma anymore, which means sooner or later she'll wake up." Dolan sometimes felt that talking to Henry was like talking to a door. But the man was solid in a fight and was one hell of an investigator, so that made up for not being the brightest bulb.

"Roger. I'll pass the word along. Henry out."

xxxXXXxxx

Waking up the second time wasn't so abrupt. The first time Xander woke up, when his senses had gone haywire and he'd discovered he was somehow no longer male, had been abrupt and sudden as a car crash. This second time, maybe ten minutes later, was easy, gentle, and gradual. His awareness of his surroundings was just as hyper-precise as it had been before, but somehow it wasn't as intrusive, and he found it easier to just turn the volume down on everything. It allowed his consciousness to slip into active mode rather than just dumping it on him like a cold bucket of water.

The first thing Xander recognized was that he was still a girl. That hadn't changed. He still had a pair of boobs, and his... his... he suddenly found himself unable to say it, or even use one of the dozens of childish euphamisms he and Jesse had carefully memorized while they were growing up. He just couldn't make himself use the terms.

He caught himself then. He. Himself. Him. Internally, in his head, he still felt like a guy. Externally, he felt like a... no, that thought wasn't any better and he was sure that he didn't want to feel his out... no, stop that line of thought right now. Okay, so he was a girl... he'd just have to deal until he... she, damn it... she, either got used to the idea or found a way to switch himself back.

Embarassed by his own embarassment, he slowly opened his eyes.

A blonde woman in a nurses outfit was standing over him, and was reaching toward Xander's face. Xander pulled back as far as she could and gasped, scared for a moment. The nurse obligingly stepped backward a pace and smiled. It was a nice enough smile, Xander thought to herself. That was a smile engineered to make a patient feel relief. Of course, there were two scary, imposing guys who were so obviously government agents standing by the door. They each were watching Xander like a hawk, and both of them had a pistol and some sort of foldable machine gun tucked under their coats. The two men took some of the relief away.

Okay, a lot of the relief away.

"Well, you're awake! That's great!" The nurse spoke using an assured yet kindly tone, again engineered to make a patient feel at ease. "My name's Susan. I'm one of the long-term-care nurses here at this facility. I've been taking care of you since last October. Now, I don't mean to frighten you, but I need to check your pupil response. The nurse held up a small penlight. I'm also going to ask you some questions just to confirm you're okay. Okay?"

Xander nodded and tried to hold her head still.

"Now, you might find that your throat is too dry and scratchy to talk well, so do your best." The nurse seemed nice enough, but she'd obviously had tuna fish recently, and hadn't had a chance to brush her teeth yet. The fishy smell almost made Xander recoil. As with the brightness of the light, the overwhelming stench of tuna faded into the background. "Open your eyes real wide, please, and hold them." Nurse Susan, who was really Agent Susan DelMarco, and who really was a trained nurse, flashed the light into Xander's eyes, and then away. Susan did this a couple of times per eye. "First question... can you tell me your name?"

Without really thinking about it, Xander started to reply. "Xan..." She coughed slightly from the scratchiness in her voice. "Xan... der... uh..." Xander's eyes widened at the sound of her own voice. Instead of his usual baritone, his voice was higher and lighter. Gravelly from lack of use, sure, but still... he even sounded like a girl. Even worse, if they saw her as a girl... would they think she was lying if she gave them a guy's name as her own?

Susan smiled at Xander's attempt to speak. "Its okay. Let me get you some water." She turned and poured ice water from a small plastic pitcher into a cup with a straw and then held the cup while Xander sucked down the water. Like everything else they'd been feeding the prisoner, Susan knew that the water had a certain amount of sedatives in the mix. Tasteless, and guaranteed to prevent the girl she was caring for from getting too frisky. Susan didn't know what they wanted the girl for, but it didn't matter. Until they said otherwise, this girl was a patient, and she'd be nice to her because of that.

"So your name is Xandra? That's a bit unusual. What's your last name?"

Xander turned it over in his head for a moment. 'Xandra'... that would work. Alexandra Harris was a better fit on his current body than Alexander, that's for sure. Suddenly he returned his attention back to the nurse. "What?" His voice wasn't quite the alto croak it had been a moment ago, but it was still obviously rusty from use.

"Your last name? We didn't have it, and you've been here for so long, I'm sure your family would want to know you're alive." Susan put on 'Concerned Face #4 , the one with the little lip wibble, and allowed Xandra another drink of water.

"Harris. My name is, um, Xandra Harris." She swallowed some more water. "Xandra is short for Alexandra."

Susan grinned at her. Sometimes it was just too easy. "Well, its nice to finally meet you, Alexandra Harris. Can you tell me where you're from? It'll help us locate your family."

"California. I'm from Sunnydale, California. When you tell my folks that I'm still alive, they'll probably ask how much they'll have to pay to keep me." Her face became dark and shrouded.

Susan couldn't help but pat Xandra on the arm. It was like patting a steel bar. "Um... Alexandra... are things not good at your home? I mean... were you... did they beat you? Did your father ever..." without meaning to, the nurse's eyes darted down toward Xandra's chest, then back up. "Did he touch you? You know..."

The girl's face went from glum to confused to disgusted. "Oh ick! Ugh! Why with the bad thoughts? I'm going to be all day scrubbing that out of there. No! He never touched me. The worst he ever did was occasionally get liquored up and throw beer bottles at me. Ew!" The long speech got scratchier and scratchier, and quieter and quieter, as Xandra's voice went out.

Susan helpfully brought more water. "I see. Well, the doctor will be in shortly to let you know how you're doing. Just sit back and relax and everything will be okay. Okay?"

Xandra, the name she kept repeatedly telling herself to use, did sit back, but couldn't exactly relax. "Could you tell me something before you go?"

On the inside, Nurse Susan was less sure about herself, suddenly. "I'll try."

"Okay, trying is good. Who are the goons in the suits? And why am I chained to the bed?" Xandra held her arms up, revealing the shackled and the cables.

Susan tried to find a way to be reassuring yet firm at the same time, without coming across as a jailer. "Well... they have some questions for you too. As for the shackles... I'm afraid I can't say." Before Xandra had another chance to ask a question, she hustled herself out the door.

Xandra closed her eyes, and spoke without opening them. "So what do I call you guys? Mutt and Jeff? Heckle and Jeckyll? Laurel and Hardy?" The two men didn't so much as bat an eye lash in reaction. Xandra opened her eyes, glanced at them, then looked out the window toward the setting sun. Okay then.

xxxXXXxxx

Outside, Agent Understone was already issuing orders in the command center. He turned to Copella and said, "Okay, we have a name. I want everything there is to know about Alexandra Harris from Sunnydale California, and I want it yesterday. We also need to bring in a judge who's been briefed in so we can begin the interrogation and the processing. This poor girl's going to be in prison for the rest of her life, and I don't want to fuck this up and make it harder than it has to be for her, got it?"

The rest of his team nodded and went about their work. Understone let out a sigh. He hated doing this to people, but it wasn't his call. Hopefully someone would smarten back up before it went to far. At least the girl was being cooperative.

It would have worried Agent Understone if he had known that the girl in question had listened to everything he had just said with a great amount of interest and a growing sense of hostility.

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note**: This story was inspired by A New World in My View by P.H. Wise. Some background plot elements have been borrowed from that story. Out of everything else, if you recognize it, its probably either Mutant Enemy's toy, Marvel Comics' toy, or else DC Comics' toy.


	3. Do You Know Why You're Here?

**Do You Know Why You're Here, Evey Hammond?**

xxxXXXxxx

_"Hero is not a noun. It's a verb." - Robert Downey, Jr._

xxxXXXxxx

Two days later they decided to move her. Xandra wasn't sure where they were going, but at least she had some warning. She could hear them talking about her pretty clearly, after all. For a moment she considered just getting up and leaving, but she wasn't quite sure. Xandra wasn't a line-toer necessarily, but he didn't have it in him to be the blatant rebel against authority that Buffy was. Her first instinct was to try and cooperate until cooperation turned out to be useless, and then try to get out from under the authority as quickly as possible.

And despite what the voice of memory whispering in the back of her head was telling her, despite the fact that she distinctly remembered being a superheroine... Power Girl, for crying out loud!... on the night of Halloween, there was a part of it that didn't somehow accept it. And besides, this was obviously the government.

She still had trouble believing that the agency that held him was called SHIELD. That was from Marvel. She... and Xandra had to almost torture herself to get her to admit this... she was from DC. The two weren't supposed to meet. I mean, sure there had been some single-issue crossovers in the 70s and 80s, but they didn't count, right?

But from what she overheard, the Fantastic Four was real. The Avengers were real. The Hulk, the X-Men, Galactus; all of it very real. And SHIELD too. And SHIELD had her, and they were going to ship her off to something called the Gulag for the rest of her life, because of something that for some reason no one managed to mention. So Xandra had no idea why she was being shipped off to this Gulag.

Xandra hadn't decided if she was going to let them do that to her. Civics was a class he'd slept through, a lot, but he seemed to remember something about cruel and unusual punishment and everyone getting a fair trial and getting a lawyer when you asked for one, and it sounded like they were going to skip the Constitution entirely.

But, and this was a big but, did she want to be an escaped fugitive? She knew she'd hate being on the run for the rest of her life. And knowing that this was the Marvel Universe, the government had some pretty heavy resources to call upon to round up a fugitive. Of course, nothing she could think of when it came to the government in Marvel could possibly handle a Kryptonian. But maybe she'd missed something.

She was beginning to wish she'd read more Marvel titles. Her background on Marvel was basically limited to the things everybody knew about Marvel. Spider-Man was a photographer. The Avengers were lead by Captain America. Thor really was a God. And the X-Men were hated. And that was just about it. When she compared his knowledge of Marvel trivia to his knowledge of DC trivia, it was no contest at all. Xandra could name, from memory, about forty different Green Lanterns, and knew the names and secret identities of everyone who'd ever been in the Justice League.

Was it his fault that the DC books were just so much better?

xxxXXXxxx

Five agents, all women, entered her room. Two were carrying long poles with what looked like grabbies on the end of them and were pushing a cart that had a built in seat; the other two were armed with an impressively large gun. The third calmly approached her bed. The last two took up positions in the room that covered the other agents, their hands on their guns.

The one moving forward was a redhead with a pretty, if not beautiful face and just a hint of a Kiwi accent. "Miss Harris, I'm Agent Dunne, and this is my team." The agent kept approaching with her hands out, showing no threat. "The doctors declared you fit to be released into our custody, and we were sent to move you to a place where you will be interrogated and processed. Now... I'm hoping we can do this calmly and smoothly. I've got nothing against you, personally, and while I know you feel like the rug's been pulled out from under you, what with being in a coma for so long, I know you and I can get along. Please don't prove me wrong, now."

"Friendly is good. I can do friendly." Xandra nodded, still not sure what was going on. "Why am I going to be interrogated? And processed for what? No one will tell me what's going on. I don't even know how I got here." He'd had some flashes of memory, and remembered falling out of the sky finally, but how he got in the sky in the first place to fall out of it, much less how he got in the sky to fall out of it, wrapped in an invulnerable female body was anybody's guess.

The agent just nodded. "I understand you're confused, but just be aware that we have to move you, okay? The agents who will be talking to you soon will be the ones to answer your questions. Now, I want you to be real still until I tell you to move. If you move before I tell you, or if you make any big moves in some way I don't tell you you can, there's going to be trouble, and neither one of us wants trouble, do we?"

Xandra just looked at the woman for a moment, then shook her head. No one wanted trouble.

Agent Dunne knelt by the side of Xandra's bed and fiddled with something under it. There was a loud buzz, and then a click, and suddenly Xandra could move her arms freely. "Um... can I stretch for a second, please?"

Agent Dunne, straightening up, nodded. "Sure. Then we're going to have you stand up."

Xandra nodded as she swung her arms back and forth in front of her. She found it vaguely distracting that those huge lumps on the front of her chest didn't restrict her freedom of movement as much as she thought they would.

Agent Dunne, in the meantime, was lowering the side-rails on the bed. She looked Xandra over for a moment. It was a bit of a sad look. But then she took a package from the back of the handcart and opened it. "You're a very pretty girl, and the guys around here are going to stare at you. We might as well give them one less thing to stare at." With that, she handed Xandra the contents of the package.

Turned out to be a pair of panties. White, solid granny panties. She knelt in front of Xandra and helped with the putting on of the underwear. It was a small kindness, but Xandra was appreciative and said so. Dunne just smiled and nodded. "One more thing, sweetie... I'm going to put this collar on you."

"What? No!" Xandra began, and the other agents immediately tensed up. Xandra gritted her teeth, and spat, "I'm not wearing a slave collar!"

"Miss Harris, its not a slave collar. It's... well... its for our safety as well as yours. All it does it turn off your powers for a little while." Agent Dunne had been approaching the entire time, holding the collar out before her. Xandra thought about it. While that little whispering voice of memory in the back of her head had been telling her about her new abilities, it was still hard to believe.

Xandra was still shaking her head. "No... I'm not going to let you put it on me."

"Both of the armed agents slid their pistols out of their holsters." Agent Dunne's face changed. She held up a hand that kept the two women from pointing their weapons directly at the girl, but they were both close. "Alexandra, if you do not allow me to put you in the collar, two of my companions will shoot you. We expect you're pretty tough, what with your muscle density and all, but they aren't just regular pistols. Those pistols fire a magnetically accelerated round to around Mach 40, and that round will go through at least three rows of armored cars without even noticing they are there. We do not want to shoot you, but if the alternative is for us to be in danger from you, what's our choice? Think about it honey... please."

Somewhere in the back of Xandra's head the voice was telling her that it would sting, maybe, but if she was determined, it wouldn't even slow her down. But Xandra didn't want to fight, not until she really knew what was going on. And especially didn't want to accidentally kill someone while doing it. At the very last, Xandra's shoulder's slumped. "Will it come off? Will you take it off when I'm done with the questions?"

Agent Dunne immediately un-tensed. "Of course, sweetie." Xandra heard the skip in her heartbeat, and saw the woman's body temperature suddenly rise by a fraction of a degree. "Once we're done, there's no need to keep you in it."

Xandra glared for another moment, then nodded silently. Agent Dunne instructed her to turn around and face the back wall, and in a moment the power-nullifying collar was in place. Xandra was amazed that no one tested it. It was in place, so they assumed it was working. Casually, Xandra shifted her visual spectrum higher, past the ultraviolet and into the x-ray range, and studied Agent Dunne for a moment. The agent had a set of metallic screws in her shoulder, had once badly broken her left leg... and as Xandra retuned her vision lower toward visual light, could see that the Agent's red hair came from a bottle. _"Curtains don't match the drapes,"_ she muttered.

Agent Dunne barely heard the comment. "What was that, sweetie?"

"Nothing. Just a stray thought." Xandra snorted softly, enjoying the private joke.

Agent Dunne stared for a moment, and then started everyone moving. "Okay... Agents Murphy and Tyler are going to guide you to your seat. Just relax." The two agents carrying the poles brought them level to Xandra's wrists, which were still shackled, and jabbed them forward suddenly until they made contact. The poles locked onto the shackles magnetically, and the two guards used them to guide Xandra away from the bed and to the seat on the pushcart.

"That's it. Nice and easy, right?" She looked Xandra in the eyes, seemingly checking her reactions. Making sure the power inhibiter was working. Xandra was a bit scared, but was still willing to play along. Besides, she wasn't particularly interested in scaring them by letting them know just how easy it would have been for her to ignore their commands.

"Okay, we're going to lock the shackles to the cart, and put another set on your ankles. Please don't fight. I know it'll feel a bit claustrophobic, but don't resist." Agent Dunne nodded to her partners with the poles, and they pushed at her in such a way that caught her off guard. Xandra landed in the metal seat hard, off-balance, and had to pretend that it hurt. Tyler and Murphy gestured toward her, obviously intending her to shift in her seat. She complied with them, but her irritation was plain to see on her face.

"You didn't have to shove me like that. You knocked me off balance." Xandra tried to make herself sound harmless, like a sixteen year old girl would sound in this situation. It took him a moment to realize he was a sixteen year old girl in this situation. Shrugging, she added, "I don't like it when I feel like I'm falling."

The five agents shared a glance, and then Dunne said, "Okay, I guess that's okay. Its a natural reaction, and you're cooperating. Everybody's still friendly, right?" At Xandra's nod, she picked up the ankle shackles. "Okay, feet coming up." And it was done. Xandra could immediately tell why they allowed her to put on some underwear. The way her legs were positioned, her knees were spread out and her wahoo would have been on public display.

The agents started moving the cart, and Xandra took the time to talk to Dunne. "This is fantastically uncomfortable. Have you ever ridden like this?"

Dunne just shook her head. "Never gave anyone a reason to put me in that cart."

Xandra just looked at her for a moment. The clear message here was that Xandra had, in fact, given someone a reason. She bit her lip and nodded. "Yeah, well, you should try it sometime. Get a feel for what you're putting other people through. Helps keep things in perspective."

There was enough of an edge in her voice to cause Agent Dunne to lose the smile.

xxxXXXxxx

Agents Murphy and Tyler wheeled Xandra into a bare, badly lit room made of what looked like concrete blocks. It wasn't dark so much as the entire thing had a green tinge to it, like the bulbs in the ceiling were bad or out of focus or something. The only furniture in the room was a metal table and three chairs; two were on one side of the table, the third on the other. The chairs were just chairs, but Xandra couldn't help but notice that the table was a single piece of molded metal that extended close to three feet into the floor. And like her shackles, Xandra couldn't see through it when she tried. That, more than anything else, intrigued her.

The furniture was situated just off-center in the room, and seemed just as featureless as the rest of the room. To the side of the table, one wall had a huge mirror on it. It took less than a second for Xandra to count the people on the other side of the mirror. There were six of them. One of them was one of her doctors, another Agent Dunne. Two more agents worked at what looked like computer monitors. The last two were probably the bosses. What was their... oh, right. Understone and Copella. She wondered which one was which, having only ever previously heard their voices.

Murphy got the cart right next to the side of the table featuring a single chair. Then she disengaged the shackles around Xandra's ankles, disconnected the shackle cables holding her hands away from the cart, and stepped back. Tyler and the other two guards were behind Xandra, all standing with their hands on their weapons. Xandra just sat on the cart, waiting to be told what to do next.

"Miss Harris, please stand up, then sit down in the chair with your hands flat on the table," Murphy instructed. Xandra did as she was told, and only then noticed the divot shaped into the table in front of her. The cables to her shackles were run through the ring hidden in the divot; her hands were thus secured to the table in such a way that she couldn't raise them more than about five inches.

Agent Murphy actually thanked Xandra for her cooperation, in a slightly forced tone. Once she was secure, to men entered the room and sat across from her at the table. She hadn't seen either of these men before.

The taller man carried a file. A very thin file. Xandra saw that it had her name on it.

The shorter-but-older agent started speaking while the younger started arranging papers in the file. "Start the recording, now," he said, with a slight emphases on the word now. "Interrogation interview of Federal Prisoner 011894-06L. The time is..." The agent stopped talking just long enough to check his watch. "The time is 1912 hours, the date is 11 August 2006. Interrogation detail is comprised of Agents James K. Nightlinger and Daniel Posthelwhite. Agent Nightlinger..."

Xandra goggled at the man for a moment, before interrupting. "What did you just say?"

Nightlinger coughed, obviously irritated, and said, "The prisoner will refrain from speaking unless either responding to a direct question or after being invited to speak freely. Now, to continue. Agent Night..."

"No, hold on. What did you say the date was?" Xandra was beginning to shake a little. This was important.

Nightlinger sighed. The first two rules of interrogation was to never, ever give up control of the conversation and to never, ever answer an interrogation subject's own questions. But this was a harmless question, and he couldn't think of a good reason other than being an asshole for not answering it. Besides, from his briefing, this person was in a coma for five months. It was probably some sort of time lag shock.

"Today is 11 August 2006. Now, to continue." He glared at Xandra, who wasn't paying attention. "I am Agent Nightlinger, speaking as senior agent in the detail. Also in the room are Agents Tyler, Murphy, and Hastings. They are present due to inter-gender protocols when interrogating a female suspect." He stopped speaking for a moment, then cleared his throat. "I would now ask you to please state your name for the record."

Xandra wasn't listening, though. _"The hell?"_ she muttered to herself. _"That can't be... they said..."_

A little more forcefully, Agent Nightlinger repeated his instruction. "I would now ask you to state your name for the record."

Xandra's eyes met his, and she realized the man had said something. It took her just a moment to recall the request. "Oh... right... Xande... I mean Alexandra Harris."

"Do you have a middle name, Ms. Harris?" Agent Nightlinger smiled one of those slimy, shoe-salesman smiles at Xandra while his counterpart wrote everything down.

"Yes, but it sucks so I don't like to talk about it. You're going to make me talk about it, aren't you?" Xandra sighed as the agents waited patiently. "Lavelle. My middle name is Lavelle. It was my great-grandmother's name."

"Uh-huh. So your full name is Alexandra Lavelle Harris?" At Xandra's nod, he added, "And your date of birth?" Again the agent gave Xandra that slimy smile.

"Twelfth of January." Xandra stopped. She still couldn't believe the date could be correct, because that would mean he moved through time as well as dimensions. And he didn't want them to think he was twenty-five when he hadn't even hit his twentieth year. Think! Think!

Agent Posthelwhite had stopped writing and was looking at Xandra. Agent Nightlinger also. The latter cleared his throat, then asked, "And the year?"

Xandra stared into space. "Um... 1990?" was the timid reply.

Agent Nightlinger grimaced. "Are you asking me, or telling me?"

Xandra shrugged. "I don't know... I'm... uh... fifteen or sixteen or so... probably closer to sixteen. So that would make me..." he started visibly counting on his fingers, trying to throw the interrogators off. "Yeah, 1990."

The interrogators looked at each other for a moment, sharing a glance that told Xandra that they both thought she was an idiot. Then Nightlinger turned back. "And where did you say you were born, Miss Harris?"

"Sunnydale General Hospital, in Sunnydale, California. I still live there. I go to school there." Xandra smiled sheepishly. "Its my junior year."

"So you are a minor? You're claiming to be a minor?"

Xandra was puzzled. "Claiming? What... hey! Don't you have to have my folks here before you can question me? Or at least get me a lawyer? I want a lawyer. You're not supposed to just start asking me questions like that. I watch the history channel! I saw that show about the amendments."

At these comments, the interrogators got even more grim, but she could dimly hear stifled laughter from behind the mirror, and the voice of Copella, who she could finally put a face to, saying, _"Man, I do so love it when they try and lawyer up. I love this next part."_

Agent Nightlinger took a handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped the side of his nose with it, and put it back. "Miss Harris, you seem to be operating under a misconception. Under Article 2, Section four of the Superhuman Registration Act, I can ask you any question I want, and not only do I not have to have one of your parents or a lawyer present, you're not even allowed to ask for one. So do please be quiet until and unless you are given permission to speak, or you are answering a direct question."

"You can't get away with this. I'm an American! I have rights! The Constitution says..." Xandra was growing more and more horrified by the second.

"Miss Harris, shut your fucking mouth or I will have one of the guards beat you unconscious and we will try this again later. Do you understand me?" Agent Nightlinger wasn't even attempting to hide his contempt. "Under the law you are no longer considered a person. You and your kind are walking, talking weapons of mass destruction to be dealt with as appropriate according to the law."

He gestured to his partner, who laid down a paper in front of him. "There is no town called 'Sunnydale' in California, Miss Harris. No Sunnydale General Hospital. No Sunnydale High School." As he spoke, his partner continued to lay papers down in front of the girl. "Oh... and for the record, there's no girl named 'Buffy' there who is killing vampires, either. Seriously, Miss Harris... did you not think we'd figure it out? Sunnydale?" The man was air-quoting now. "Did you think no one here watches television, Miss 'Harris'?" Again with the air quotes. "You know, that's something I have to ask you... why did you pick a male character's name as an alias? Why not call yourself Elizabeth Summers or Willow Rosenberg? Or maybe even..." Agent Nightlinger grabbed a piece of paper, studied it for a moment, and said, "Why not Cordelia Chase or Amy Madison or Harmony Kendall? No... you chose a man's name and feminized it."

Nightlinger stood up and leaned into Xandra's face. "Why would that be? Are you a dyke, Miss Harris? Is that it? You secretly want to be a man? Come on! Tell..."

A knock on the mirror from the other side reigned the man in while simultaneously breaking the open secret that the mirror wasn't a mirror.

Nightlinger sat and stared at Xandra's horrified face. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself before speaking again. His partner hadn't said a word, and continued to be silent throughout. "Understand this, whatever your name is. You have no rights anymore. You're an unregistered metahuman; probably a mutant at that. You were found as a direct result of a use of your super-powers, and dressed as you were it was obvious that you were engaging in unlawful activity as an unregistered metahuman. You're not going to even get a trial. If you cooperate enough, you might be offered the chance to work for the government. But do not begin to think that you're not walking out of here. At least not without wearing a leash that we hold the other end of."

There were tears in Xandra's eyes. Maybe this was why she never liked Marvel Comics. The whole universe was filled with pricks and assholes. She bent over so her fingers could reach and wiped the tears from her face. And when she sat back up, she too looked calmer.

"My name really is Alexandra Lavelle Harris. I really was born in Sunnydale, California. And yeah, I really do have superpowers." Xandra closed her eyes for a moment, coming to a decision. She opened her eyes for a moment. "What am I being charged with. Other than being born different from the majority, I mean. Which I thought stopped being illegal back around the time Grant kicked Lee's ass."

Nightlinger, a black man, took a deep breath. "Do not ever compare you and your kind to me and my people. Don't you dare." He took a deeper breath and let it out. "You are being charged with failure to register your status as a metahuman in accordance with federal law, reckless endangerment, malicious mischief, trespassing, and lastly, flying without a license and without filing a flight plan." Before Xandra could say anything, the man held up his hand. "And yes, we are serious about the trespassing charge and the licensing and flight plan charges. Those are very serious violations."

"And I don't get a..." Xandra stopped as the man started shaking his head, obviously foreseeing the return of the question. "Okay, I get it. You're all a bunch of tyrannical assholes." She turned and looked directly at the mirror. " Can I thank the doctor's and nurses who took care of me for the last five months? Thanks, guys. I appreciate it."

Nightlinger harrumphed. "Young lady, I still have questions and you will answer them."

Xandra smirked and shook her head. "No, no more questions. I'm done. Sorry for all the trouble." With that Xandra lifted her arms as high as she could and pulled. _**PULLED!**_

Posthelwhite sneered at her, and then laughed. Breaking his silence, he said, "Young lady, the table is a single piece of primary grade adamantium. A nuclear weapon wouldn't dent it. Don't begin for a moment that you can break out of this."

Xandra didn't listen. She was too busy pulling. And slowly, the cable that attached her left shackle to her right began to visibly stretch. The table might be pure adamantium, but the cable wasn't.

XxxXXXxxx

"Holy shit! You seeing this, boss?" Copella had dropped his coffee cup and was staring at the girl through the mirror. "I don't believe it! She's got a neutralizer on and everything! How is she stretching out a length of secondary adamantium! Its not like she's the Hulk or anything! What's going on?"

Understone had no answers. He watched for only a moment before picking up the phone. "This is Understone. Lock down the facility now. I need security in Interrogation Four! Move! And someone get me Stark! We need some heavy backup! Tell him to get his metal ass here yesterday!"

As Understone put the phone down he saw one of the guards who had escorted the girl, Murphy, draw her weapon, aim, and fire. Everybody in the observation room ducked suddenly as the one-way glass shattered. There was a loud CHOCK sound as the hyper-bullet bounced off of the girl's body, came through the mirror, and continued through the wall on the far side of the room. Understone was gobsmacked.

He stared as the guard pulled the trigger twice more, the hyper-bullets again ricocheting at random. The third once again flew into the observation room, and Understone heard, but didn't see Agent Copella's head vanish in a haze of red gobbets.

The girl stopped pulling on the visibly weaker cable long enough to turn her head, stare right into Agent Murphy's eyes, and say, "Do not do that again! You might hurt someone! I mean... someone else. Someone not me." And the she went right on pulling. A few seconds later, the chain snapped. The power-nullifying collar lasted no more than a few seconds, and the shackles were gone seconds after that. By that time, the reinforcements arrived.

The girl turned to face the new arrivals, and as she did a pair of gas grenades landed at her feet. The gray-white smoke filled the room. It was the first time Understone had experienced CS gas since basic training. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth, knowing it was useless. His eyes burned and snot ran down his face, but he couldn't keep from watching.

The girl didn't even notice the gas was there, for all that it affected her. She should have been crying and snotting up and blubbering and doing anything she could to get out of the pain. Instead, she gently picked up the grenades, examined them for a moment, and then pinched the release valves closed with her bare hands. The projectiles from two different tasers bounced off of her skin while he watched as well. Finally, the girl actually allowed one of the agents to get close and strike her across the face with an expanding baton. The thing rebounded so hard the agent lost his grip on it.

With that, the reinforcements just stood there, unsure of what to do. The girl, on the other hand, spun around slowly, seeming to look at everything in the room before finally settling on the east wall. She glanced back over her shoulder just once, and seemed aggrieved at the death of Agent Copella and her accidental part in it. She looked Understone in the eyes and said, I'm sorry. I didn't want anyone to get hurt.

And with that, the girl stepped up to the east wall and powered her way through it as if were made of soap bubbles.

XxxXXXxxx

Xandra pushed her way through the wall into the next room. It looked like heavy brick, but it turned out that it was mostly cinder block Not that it mattered, but it was interesting how differently concrete felt compared to cinder block Just one of those things that Xandra would have to keep exploring.

_Okay... you're officially an escaped fugitive with a huge multinational crime-fighting organization coming after you. What you going to do next?_ She giggled to herself, and was shocked by the sound of it. She had intended to finish the thought with something stupid like, _I'm going to Disney World_, but the sound of her laugh stopped her cold. And it wasn't even a laugh. It was a giggle. A giggle! Xander never giggled. Guffawed maybe. Chuckled, sure. But giggled? Never. _Okay, let's go back further, Xan. You're escaping from a huge multinational crime-fighting organization and haven't left their headquarters yet. What do you do next?_

There was a loud series of pops behind her. She turned around to see an Agent in a business suit pointing a service revolver in her direction. "Damn it! Would you assholes stop shooting at me? You're only going to get yourself hurt! I'm getting out of here, but I don't want to hurt you guys doing it. You're the good guys, so... be good guys somewhere else right now, okay?"

The guy with the revolver looked at her as if she'd caught fire spontaneously, but he nodded and held his pistol up on one finger. Xandra nodded and continued her examination of her surroundings. _ Okay... that wall leads to outside. Cool._

She was about to power through the next wall when she heard Agent Dunne's voice behind her. "Alexandra... stop." It caused Xandra to pause; even if she lied, Dunne was always nice about it. Xandra turned around with an expectant look on her face.

Dunne started talking, never once lowering her pistol from where it was pointing right at Xandra. "There's nowhere to run, Alexandra. The Avengers are going to be here any minute and they'll beat you down. And Stark will figure out a way to contain you and you'll still go to prison. Stop. Just stop. Surrender and I promise I'll talk them into giving you another chance." The agent's voice was almost plaintive. She almost seemed to be honestly concerned. "I get it. You're just a scared kid who's in over her head. I understand that. I've got kids myself. I know how it can be for you guys. Please. Xandra... don't make it worse for yourself."

The recently rechristened Alexandra Lavelle Harris took a deep breath, then shook her head. "I'm sorry. I won't let them do this to me. I don't want to fight anyone, but what you're doing is wrong. Its evil. And its un-American. And when it comes down to it, I can run pretty fast and I'm good at hiding." Xandra turned and started punching through the outer wall. Agent Dunne's weapon never lost its aim, but the agent didn't bother pulling the trigger. And in seconds, Xandra was out and free.

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note:** This story was inspired by A New World in My View by P.H. Wise. Some background plot elements have been borrowed from that story. Out of everything else, if you recognize it, its probably either Mutant Enemy's toy, Marvel Comics' toy, or else DC Comics' toy.


	4. The Inevitable Fight You Knew Was Coming

**The Inevitable Fight That You All Knew Was Coming**

xxxXXXxxx

_Heroes are ordinary people who know that even if their own lives are impossibly knotted, they can and do untangle somebody else's life. And then that one small act of helping another can lead to someone else rescuing them right back. - Jodi Picoult_

xxxXXXxxx

Xandra stepped through the ruined wall and found herself behind a low-set row of shrubbery on a small patch of grass. Just pass this small sign of life was the sidewalk, then the street. Four lanes of traffic, two in both ways, then another sidewalk and another building.

She'd never been in New York City, before, but she'd seen it on television a lot. And in movies. Xandra had honestly thought that would prepare her for how busy the place was. There were people and cars and buildings everywhere. It wasn't like Sunnydale where everything was spread out. Here, it seemed everything was jammed up on top of everything else, and then more stuff was added to the top later. The effect was enough to stop her in her tracks. _Merciful Zeus! How do people live like this? People on top of people._ Of course, most of the people she saw were staring at her and pointing, some were running and screaming. Traffic had come to a grinding halt in front of her, with more pointing. Some people, the ones carrying cameras, were snapping her picture.

Xandra was still standing there, just a few seconds after coming through the wall, when the beefy man in the security uniform tried to tackle her from behind. He had apparently followed her through the wall and just jumped on her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Of course, he might as well have been trying to tackle a support column made of concrete and rebar.

"Hey! Hands! Hands in naughty places!" Xandra grabbed the man's wrists and pushed his hands away, only just catching herself in time to keep from separating his arms from his shoulders. Inexorably, she pulled his arms from around her, then let him go and turned around. "Not nice to grab a girl there! And I'm just a kid! You should be ashamed of yourself! Did your Mom raise you like that?" Xandra looked back through the hole she'd just knocked through the wall. Agent Dunne was still standing there, just staring at her with that same glum expression. There were a handful of other SHIELD agents there was well. Just watching her.

The man, whose name tag said "Early", just stood there for a moment. Then he gritted his teeth and made a quick boxing jab toward her face. Xandra leaned out of the punch, then said, "Agent Early, you're only going to break your hand. You can't hurt me. What's the point here?" She grabbed his arm while he was at full extension, as gently as she could, and held it there.

The man, Early, jerked himself backward in an attempt to free his arm, but was unable to ease her grip at all. He tried a second time, then stopped struggling. "Okay, I guess you got me. I saw you on the security cameras. Yeah, I knew I couldn't hurt you but its my job so I had to try." Early seemed to laugh inwardly for a second. "Call it macho pride. At least you're not acting like some kind of rampaging beast here. And I'm sorry about grabbing you where I grabbed you; that was an accident. Just... uh... Don't hurt me, please? I got a kid at home."

"Hey, no problem. I understand. I'm not the Hulk. I'm not going to flip out and start assaulting people at random." Xandra let go of his wrist. "You going to play nice and leave me alone?"

Early nodded. "Yeah, I gave it my shot. Besides, I was here more to slow you down than anything else." And with that, the security guard leapt to the side as hard as he could. For a fraction of a second, Xandra wondered what that was all about. Unfortunately, she didn't have time to think on it further because an explosion of force blew her into the air and sent her spinning. It took but a moment to stabilize herself, barely noticing that she was in mid-air when she made herself come to a stop and correctly oriented herself in relation to the ground. She wasn't the only one in the air.

It was Iron Man. **_The Iron Man!_**. From the comics. As real as her own hands, and as big as life. The comic book geek in her was going through a joygasm. _How cool was this!_ And arrayed behind Iron Man was a pair of other superheroes whom Xandra recognized from the Avengers comics. _Oh this is so cool!_

The man in the metal suit seemed to be about to say or do something, but Xandra's geeky squee of joy stopped everyone in their tracks for a moment.

"I can't believe it. Iron Man! This is just great!" Xandra continued. She was oblivious to the fact that she was standing on thin air, wearing nothing but a hospital gown and a pair of granny panties. "And that's Black Widow, right? I used to love you in Daredevil! Frank Miller rules, doesn't he? And is that Ms. Marvel? I mean, right out of the old 70s and 80s comics! Wow! The last time I saw you, you were in the X-Men as Binary!" Xandra knew that the babbling wasn't helping, but she couldn't help it. This is so cool! "So... hey, where's Thor? I always thought meeting him would be fun. Does he really talk like he's in a Shakespeare play? Or hey! How about Captain America? Can I get autographs from you guys?"

xxxXXXxxx

Inside the Iron Man suit, Tony Stark was nonplussed. He had no idea what to expect when he got the call from SHIELD requesting help suppressing a powerful mutant prisoner, but a flying teenage girl in a hospital gown wasn't it. Especially not a flying teenage girl in a hospital gown who was apparently a big hero groupie. The girl was just floating there in midair, having recovered from his initial repulsor blast in seconds without any seeming effort, gushing about how cool it was to meet the Avengers. Obviously the amount of trouble she was in hadn't sunk in.

He had, of course, noticed that the girl was beautiful, and he remembered that SHIELD told him that they believed, based on physical examinations and the girl's own statements, that she was still a minor. _Yowza, look at her..._ but no, time was wasting. Besides, from the looks on the faces of the Black Widow and Ms. Marvel, they didn't know how to respond exactly to the girl's antics either.

His audio pickups heard Carol whisper, "How did she know I was binary?" Enough speculation and nedrgasms. Time to take control of the situation. Stark raised one of his arms and lit the repulsor in its palm, just enough to show he was ready to shoot. "Okay, Miss... the fun's over. Time to surrender and play nice. We don't want this to get messy."

That penetrated. The girl's expression went from a giddy joy at meeting some legendary heroes to utterly closed off and hostile in a fraction of a second. "No, sir. I'm sorry, but I can't do that. What they want to do is wrong. You can't just ship someone off to prison for being born. It says so in the Constitution. With that, the girl turned, obviously planning on flying away.

_"No,"_ Tony muttered. _"Can't have that. No running away."_ He swiftly adjusted his altitude to get a downward angle on the girl and hit her with a double repulsor blast.

It was enough force to knock the target to the street. Without pausing, he said, "Carol, you're up." Tony's heads-up display labeled her as Alexandra L. Harris , and included a swift rundown of her powers. Super strength, dense musculature, hard to hurt... and apparently she could fly, something SHIELD never discovered. His armor's on-board computer was rapidly receiving new intelligence from SHIELD, and within seconds the estimated Beta power level was upgraded to Alpha. Okay, they could handle this. Both he and Ms. Marvel were Alphas as well, and two-to-one was pretty good odds. He saw the list of charges being made against the girl. Stark rolled his eyes at the trespassing charge.

At Iron Man's command, Ms. Marvel launched herself into the air and came down almost on top of the escaping prisoner, who was only now beginning to stand back up. The female Avenger used the momentum of her powered leap to increase the force of her punch as she lashed out, connecting with the left side of the target's jaw, once again knocking the young girl to the ground.

"Stay down. Just stay right where you are!" Carol Danvers, the Avenger known as Ms. Marvel, stood over the girl as Iron Man approached. Stark barely noticed Ms. Marvel shake her hand and wriggle her fingers. Or rather, he noticed, but the implications didn't register.

Their target got up on her hands and knees, and the parabolics in his mask picked up her voice, whispering. "Leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone. I just want to leave. I don't want to fight." The girl seemed to be repeating it like a mantra. She started to rise to her feet, despite Ms. Marvel's command for her to stay down. The Harris girl stumbled forward a step, obviously trying to get away. Ms. Marvel lashed out a second time with a punch capable of caving in the door of a bank vault, striking downward at the girl who hadn't finished standing. Once again the girl landed on the ground.

Iron Man ignored the girl's pleas to be left alone. Even as young as she was, she was not only an unregistered mutant, but she escaped from federal custody. "Oh, and look at this," Stark said to himself as a charge of Felony Murder Related To Escape appeared on the constantly updating charges list. Someone must have died during the escape, which meant that even if the girl wasn't directly involved in the death, she was still responsible for it.

"Alexandra Harris, under the authority granted to me by the Avengers Initiative, and in compliance with the enforcement provisions of the Superhuman Registration Act, we are placing you under arrest. You will immediately stand down, cease any resistance, and surrender. Do you understand?"

Later, Iron Man would admit to himself that the girl's near nakedness distracted him. It was a weakness he knew he possessed, but never liked to admit, and sometimes it interfered: he was a sucker for a beautiful woman, and this girl was gorgeous. His natural tendencies to womanize sometimes... and this was painful for him to acknowledge... interfered with his professionalism. Besides, the Harris girl was only dressed in panties and a hospital gown to begin with, and being knocked around by one of the strongest women on the planet hadn't helped when it came to keeping the girl covered. So he stared for a moment, thinking she was already neutralized. When he later remembered that he'd been staring at a minor, he'd feel even more guilty.

Which meant he hadn't noticed when, while going up on her hands and knees, the girl's fists clenched, leaving gouges in the cement of the sidewalk. It meant he was ignoring the sounds the girl was making, which had gone from the endless repetitive mantra to wordless sobs. When the girl stood for a third time, Ms. Marvel was again right there to hit her across the face. But this time the girl didn't fall. This time, the girl lashed out, faster than they'd suspected possible, and Ms. Marvel was bent over double as she was knocked away from the girl and into the concrete wall of the building across the street.

_"LEAVE! ME! ALONE!"_ It was a scream and a sob and a plea for mercy all at once. And it meant absolutely nothing to the Avengers, because they had a job to do and they were going to do it. Iron Man could see that the girl was as surprised and shocked by her actions as Ms. Marvel was, which gave him the opportunity to strike. He raised his hands and hit her with both repulsors.

His target was slammed backward into one of the empty cars behind her, shattering the windshield and caving in its front end. Before she could react he'd jetted forward toward her and hit her again, hoping to get her tangled in the wreckage of the vehicle and give Ms. Marvel a chance to get back into the game. At first it seemed to be working, but when the repulsors stopped firing to allow for a 1.34 second recharge time, the Harris girl had recovered. Screaming the whole time, tears running down her face, the girl rolled out of the car, punched her hand through what was left of its hood, and lifted it with one hand. Iron Man fired his repulsors again... but this time she just stood there and took them. He might as well have shot her with a nerf dartgun for all she reacted.

**_"WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE! I JUST WANT TO GO! WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LET ME GO!"_** Every window in a three block radius exploded. More quickly than he thought possible, the Harris girl swung the wreckage of the car at him, as if it was a club. The first strike knocked him into the side of the bank, and as he rebounded from it, she was on him again. This time the strike was from overhead, and he was knocked into the street. And again, before he could react, she was standing above him, slamming the car into him again and again and again, as if the car was a hammer, he was a nail, and the street itself was a plank of wood.

The overwhelming force of the impacts overloaded his armor's ability to cushion him, and Tony Stark blacked out.

xxxXXXxxx

Ms. Marvel had managed to get herself unstuck from the cement wall their target had embedded her in. Her vision was blurred, and her head felt muzzy, like her brain had been replaced by cotton fuzz. Their admittedly scant briefing had mentioned likely superhuman strength, but Carol Danvers was coming to realize that this girl might be stronger than SHIELD suspected. She was shocked as the scanned the combat zone, climbing out of the cement. Iron Man was down, but the girl was still standing over him, slamming the ruins of a car into the Iron Man suit over and over and over. Danvers could see the armor beginning to deform in spots. If this went on any longer, Stark would die.

She readied herself to leap at the girl and cried out, "Hey! Get off of him!" She was in mid-leap, almost to the target, when the Harris girl whirled around to face her. Harris was obviously enraged; she was no longer forming cogent sounds, just a continuous animalistic growling. Ms. Marvel had begun to think that this might be a good thing; if she was that angry, she would make a mistake. It wasn't to be. Harris's eyes flashed suddenly, and where once they were white and powder blue, now they were blood red and deepest orange. And then Ms. Marvel was on fire. Carol Danvers felt like she was in a microwave, getting the worst possible sunburn imaginable. She smelled her own hair charring, and her costume started to smoke. But she couldn't see anything. Her entire world had gone white, and then gone black. She fell face forward to the ground, screaming in pain.

The entire fight, from start to finish, took maybe two minutes.

xxxXXXxxx

When Ms. Marvel fell the girl seemed to lose all of her steam. She collapsed to her knees, sobbing. Natasha Romanova could see the girl's tears, and even noted that her nose was running in rivulets. The target's mouth opened and closed silently, and then the girl let loose with one of the most sorrowful sounds the Russian Avenger had ever heard in her life. It was the sound of someone who was painfully broken and who didn't know how to even begin to seek repair.

A team of SHIELD agents came pouring out of the hole in their facility, but the Widow gestured them back. They kept the target covered, for all the good it would do. Black Widow snerked at herself, as she was trying to keep the girl covered with her widow's sting. It was just a glorified taser, so she wasn't too confident on its usefulness, with what she just witnessed and the fact that the girl was ignoring gun- and repulsor-fire. The target had crawled over to Iron Man and put a hand on the crushed, misshapen chest plate. Almost too quietly to hear, the girl muttered, "I'm sorry... I didn't mean it... I didn't mean it. I just wanted to be left alone."

Black Widow actually felt grateful for being ignored. She took a look at Ms. Marvel, trying to keep the professional attitude of someone who was trained in battlefield medicine. The front half of Ms. Marvel's hair was gone, burned down to the scalp, and her face, arms, and shoulders were covered in blisters and blackened skin. It looked, in places, like Marvel's costume was melted into her skin. Romanova gently felt for a pulse, and was relieved to find one. It was weak, but it was present.

When Harris stood, the Black Widow scrambled back as quickly as possible. Again, she kept their erstwhile target covered by the widow's sting. Harris used the edge of her hospital gown to wipe at her eyes, not seeming to care that the action had quite effectively pulled the garment off of her body entirely. "I didn't mean to... I didn't mean to..." The girl seemed regretful of what happened.

"Doesn't matter know. What happened happened." Natasha Romanova swallowed deeply before continuing. "We both know I can't fight you, and I can't stop you if you try to flee, but you should know... the rest of the Avengers will be here any second now. Surrender, let me take you in. It'll be better than..." When the girl burst into tears again, when she began shaking her head no, the Widow stopped talking. No point. This girl had been traumatized, and she and her team were one of the things that did it to her.

She watched as Harris dabbed at her eyes again. "Okay... you're name was Alexandra? Can I call you Alex?" A quick nod in response. She lowered her arms and tried to appear conciliatory. "Alex, my name's Natasha. I don't want to see anyone else hurt, but there's going to be a response to all this. You know that? We just cant let you go." At that, the girl burst into tears again.

Harris took a deep shuddering breath. Again, it struck the Black Widow that this girl was suffering from something deep. "I just want to go home. I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone. I didn't want to be here. It wasn't intentional or anything." The girl was suddenly right in the Widow's face, as if she had teleported the ten feet separating them. Natasha winced at the pressure being put on her joints as the girl's hands gripped her shoulders. Her feet left the ground as the girl lifted her in both hands, effortlessly. Her breathing caught; the pressure was so much, Natasha couldn't breathe. "I was supposed to take the kids trick-or-treating, that's all! I want to be back home with my friends, eating Halloween candy and making jokes about Cordelia and... I didn't want any of this!" She dropped the Widow, who fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. As Natasha Romanova struggled to get her breath back, the Harris girl stepped back. "Tell them that. Please, tell them that."

Harris dropped the hospital gown. She turned once, studying the scene, all the while taking deep, shuddering breaths. With one last, "I'm sorry... I didn't mean it," Alexandra Harris rocketed into the air. Her flight was so swift that it generated a ground-level con-trail that extended as far into the sky as Black Widow could see. The backpressure actually caused the Black Widow to skid several feet across the ground, and knocked several of the SHIELD agents off their feet.

xxxXXXxxx

What she didn't expect was to be interrogated. "No, Janet, I emphatically did not 'just let her go.' How was I supposed to stop her? Can you tell me that? She just put down Iron Man and Ms. Marvel. What did you want me to do? Break some bones on her?" The rest of the team, except for Spider-Man who seemed sympathetic, was glaring at the Black Widow as if she, and not the Harris girl, had been the one to put Iron Man and Ms. Marvel in the hospital.

"Well." An exasperated pause. "You should have." Another exasperated pause. "Why didn't you." A huffy sigh, and the Wasp gave in. "All right. You couldn't have stopped her. SHIELD didn't tell us she was that powerful."

"I talked to that Understone guy," Spider-Man chimed in. "Apparently while Harris was awake she was pleasant and cooperative and never gave a single sign that she was capable of snapping an adamantium cable in half." He tossed the cable in question onto the table. "You know anyone this side of Sentry or the Hulk who can do that? Anyone?"

No one answered Spider-Man, because no one had to.

The Wasp stood and clapped her hands together once. "Okay. Here's what we have." The rest of the team went silent, waiting for her summation. "According to SHIELD, the radar net has tracked Harris moving west at just under Mach 2. Right now she's somewhere over Ohio. A map of the United States appeared on the monitor, with a red flashing dot indicating their target and her estimated position. SHIELD has ordered the FAA to clear her likely flight path so she won't bump into any jetliners filled with potential hostages. That said, we know she can fly faster than the speed of sound and apparently has some anger issues to work out. Let's hope this doesn't get uglier than it already is."

"We think she's heading to California, based on what Black Widow heard her say during the fight. That's assuming California is really where she's from. She is still insisting that she's Alexandra Lavelle Harris. For those of you who don't know, this is a feminized version of Alexander Lavelle Harris." Wasp pointed the remote at the screen and the grinning face of a young man appeared. "Again for those of you who don't know, Alexander Lavelle Harris is a fictional character in a TV show called _'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'_ that was quite popular during the late 90s. Harris was one of two lead male characters in the show, and was portrayed by actor Nicholas Brendon."

"Oh yeah! Him! Great actor. Love him in _Kitchen Confidential_," Spider-Man chipped in. Everyone looked at him, non-plussed. "You know... _Kitchen Confidential_? Bradley Cooper, Nicholas Brendon, Jaime King? Bad boy chefs run an upscale eatery in Manhattan? Based on the book by Anthony Bourdain? What?"

After a long, long silence, Wonder Man spoke up. "So she thinks she's a character in a TV show from the 90s? A male character to boot? What would the diagnoses of that delusion be like?"

"We can wonder about that later. Right now, we need to get a move on." The Wasp pushed up the sleeve of her costume and looked at her watch. "Based on what she said during the fight about wanting to go home, we suspect, but can't be sure, that she's heading to California. I wouldn't be surprised if she's going to try and find Sunnydale, the town where the show was set. Its not there; we checked. But, if she is going home, then she'll be in California airspace in less than an hour. Sunnydale is supposed to be less than a hundred miles north of LA. SHIELD thinks she's heading there, and will be using a spy satellite to pinpoint her location. If she doesn't go to where this Sunnydale place was supposed to be, especially if she lands inside a large city, and melds into the general population, she'll be gone."

Black Widow shifted in her seat. "Is Sentry coming? I haven't seen him in a couple of days." She then added, in a low murmur, _"Not that this is a bad thing."_

"I've sent out a coded alert. Hopefully he'll join us in California." Like Black Widow, Wasp wasn't sure whether to be happy or frightened about having Sentry along on a mission. "So. Wheels up in five. Get ready and we'll meet in the hanger. Hank, please get the quinjet warmed up. We leave as soon as everyone's assembled."

Yellowjacket nodded at his instructions and left immediately for the hanger. The rest of the team stood and moved out. Spider-Man hung back to get one last question in to the team's Deputy Leader. "Janet, tell me something. From what you said, this girl's a scared kid who wasn't hurting anybody. Why is SHIELD treating her like she's Hitler and Stalin's love child?"

Her answer was dry and filled with sarcasm. "Politics, Spider-Man. Politics and public relations. You see, her biggest crime was following in Captain America's footsteps. She refused to register, then managed to embarrass SHIELD and the Avengers both during her escape."

The web-slinger held the door for her as hey exited the room. "Yeah? And?"

The Wasp just sighed. "And... and now they expect us to help make an example out of her."

xxxXXXxxx

High above the Midwest, in the cold, stark air of the upper atmosphere, Xander Harris wept. The constant flow of tears were boiling into the air from the air friction. His nose still rain, but that liquid, being denser than the tears, merely dried on her face. Not that Xander noticed. He wasn't noticing anything really, other than the approaching Pacific coast. He certainly wasn't noticing the temperature, or the brightness of the sunshine, or the fact that he was naked except for a pair of underwear.

For the moment, he'd given up the pretense. Everything had come to a head, and the pressure and the stress he'd been going through constantly since waking was finally bubbling up and taking over. Oh sure, it had been fun to pretend he was a girl, and call himself 'Xandra' and revel in the fact that he was a superhero now. But having those pretenses thrown in his face by people who wanted to toss him into a prison for the rest of his life rendered the game no longer any fun.

He couldn't figure out what was worse. That he was in a different dimension? Yeah, that was bad. Hugely, hugely bad. That he'd been in a coma for months? That was bad also. That he'd apparently traveled ten years into the future was horrific. His friends probably thought a vampire had got him, if he'd been gone for ten years. That was plenty long for someone to be declared dead.

He didn't want to be declared dead. He liked being alive. He liked his friends. He wanted to be with his friends. Hell, he wanted to be with Giles. Who would cheer Buffy up when she needed it if he wasn't around? Who'd convince Willow that she wasn't worthless and that someone cared? Who?

But even the ten year gap couldn't hold a candle to the truly, truly maddeningly terrifying truth of his new gender. When he first discovered his new parts, as well as his lack of old parts, it had been weird, but sort of neat. Let's be honest; he was a teenage boy, and getting up close and personal with lady parts was sort of a lifelong goal, and here they were! And no one could really object to him fooling around with them, unless he was rude about it. But after a while it started to weigh on him. The more he thought about it, the more he hated it. His very identity as Xander Harris was being tossed aside, because he wasn't Xander Harris anymore.

He'd seen a mirror. He wasn't even a female version of himself. No, he was blonde, and beautiful, and had fantastic cheekbones, and long hair, and eyes the same color as the sky on a perfect spring day. And his boobs were way too big and he was muscled funny and it threw him off balance and what the hell was he supposed to do?

_**HE WASN'T A GIRL! HE DIDN'T WANT TO BE A GIRL!**_

There wasn't anything wrong with being a girl, of course. He liked girls. Boy did he like girls. He loved girls. Did that make him gay now, if he was a girl and still liked girls? Well, he assumed he liked girls. No, he definitely still liked girls.

_**WHY DID HE HAVE TO BE A GIRL!?**_

The tears started again. He couldn't help it. He was crying, and crying like a little...

No, he wasn't going to think that. That way lead to madness.

A sudden thought, coming out of left field, scampered across Xander's consciousness and it almost caused him to drop out of the sky again. It scared him so bad he started shaking, and cranked the stress up so high that he started to dry heave, sending him into free fall. He eventually did vomit, just in time to catch himself and resume his course west.

Did Kryptonian women menstruate? And if so, what in the name of all that was holy was he supposed to do about it? He was a guy, what did he know about getting a period? And he couldn't ask someone. How do you broach that subject? A doctor? Yeah? A doctor who wouldn't look at him funny when he came in, admitted he was seventeen, and never went through a period before?

What was he going to do?

If he was going to have to live as a girl for a while, shouldn't he at least try to be one? He couldn't make a decision... he was still Xander Harris despite having played around as Xandra for a while.

His thoughts turned back toward home. He couldn't remember how far it was from the east coast to the west, but he knew he was flying faster than sound (the tell-tale sonic boom was a while ago) and could see the Pacific Ocean ahead using his telescopic vision.

There had to be someone in this world who could get him home. He couldn't think of any Marvel superheroes who could move from one dimension to another except that Watcher guy on the moon, and the Watcher's schtick was never interfering. So no luck there. He might be able to check with that wizard guy, Doctor Strange. It'd never been his favorite comic, but he liked the guy's look. The cape and the big glowing amulet and those circles around his hands when he used his powers. That was a possibility.

And then the sobbing started again. Because he was certain she had killed Iron Man and Ms. Marvel.

Not intentionally. It was never his intention to hurt anyone.

But everyone knew which road was paved with one's good intentions.

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note:** This story was inspired by A New World in My View by P.H. Wise. Some background plot elements have been borrowed from that story. Out of everything else, if you recognize it, its probably either Mutant Enemy's toy, Marvel Comics' toy, or else DC Comics' toy.

**Author's Note the Second:** For whatever reason, stripped the quotation marks out of the last two chapters. I've gone back and put them back in, as well as made minor editorial changes. Updating is going to be slow-going, because I now have to go in with every chapter and re-insert the quotes. Sorry about that.


	5. But Today is a Very Different Day

**But Today... Today is a Very Different Day**

xxxXXXxxx

_"A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles." - Christopher Reeve_

xxxXXXxxx

Spider-Man sat in quiet contemplation, their target's file closed on his lap. He ran a hand through his hair, wondering. Something was very much not right here. He reopened the file to double-check something, then turned to Wonder Man, who was dozing in the seat next to him. "Got a question for you, Simon."

"Sure, what do you need?" Wonder Man opened up one eye. He hadn't actually been asleep, of course; he no longer needed sleep. But when he wanted to be alone with his thoughts he always pretended. His teammates had figured it out early.

"This girl pulled apart a set of shackles made of secondary adamantium, while wearing a collar specifically designed to neutralize mutant powers. Right?" Again, Spider-Man checked the file. "And that neutralizer was also made of secondary adamantium?"

"Yeah," Wonder Man nodded. "So?"

"So... I'm thinking there's two explanations." Spider-Man counted off on his fingers. "One, she's not a mutant, which means the collar never had a hope in Hades of affecting her and she was just playing along the entire time. Two, she is a mutant, but she's so powerful that she can basically ignore a power neutralizer, which means the collar never had a hope in Hades of affecting her and she was just playing along the entire time."

"Okay." Wonder Man sat up straighter. "So what's your point?"

"Well, if she's just a honking powerful mutant, where the hell is Xavier? He's like contractually obligated to get involved when the bad guy is a honking powerful mutant, right? But we haven't seen hide nor hair... well, we wouldn't see hair, but you know what I mean, right? No 'she's a mutant so she's our responsibility', no 'you don't understand the angst of mutant-kind, so please kindly step back out of the way while we attend to this mess'."

Spider-Man suddenly had the attention of the rest of the team. Even Hank Pym, who was piloting, was occasionally looking over his shoulder.

"What?" The web-slinger asked. Everyone was looking at him like he had a goober hanging out of his nose. "What's wrong?"

Black Widow smirked. "Peter, they aren't used to you being insightful They're used to joking, don't take anything seriously Spider-Man."

Behind his mask, Spider-Man began to sputter. "I don't know why no one ever thinks I have a brain in my head. I'll have you know, guys, that I have a Master's Degree in organic chemistry, with a minor in Engineering."

"Really?" Wonder Man looked butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "I, for one, never knew that. So she's not a mutant, then. What do you think? Fell into a vat of toxic waste? Experimented on by a mad scientist?" But Spider-Man was already shaking his head.

"Nope." The lower part of his face quirked, so they all knew he was grinning. "I think she's an Eternal."

It was Pym who spoke first. "An Eternal... interesting. Interesting. What are you basing that on?"

"Think about it." Spider-Man put the file down and leaned forward. "I've read the files of the older Avengers rosters. I mean, old members are always popping up. Remember Sersi? Amazingly hot indestructible chick with super-strength and laser eyes? Just like this girl. So I'm thinking Eternal."

"But we know all the Eternals, right?" Wonder Man turned toward the Wasp. "We know all the Eternals, don't we, Janet?"

Janet van Dyne gestured in the negative. "Not necessarily. How many of them do we know that live on Titan? Other than Thanos and Starfox, I mean? Could be thousands of them. But they're so rare, and they don't generally show up falling out of the sky at random. Its an idea, but probably not a likely one."

The Wasp seemed to want to say more, but stopped and tapped on one side of her headset. After a few moments, she spoke into her microphone. "Roger, SHIELD control. Thank you." She pushed the headset back, frizzed our her hair with her hands, and said, "Okay, NORAD lost her. She hit southern California and her signal got lost. But they think they've narrowed down the search to either Los Angeles, Ventura, or Santa Barbara counties."

Wonder Man groaned. "Great. That's only about twenty thousand square miles or so."

Spider-Man couldn't help but laugh. "Sure... but at least its not the entire state, right? And I know you live here regularly, but this is my first time ever on the west coast. I think after we wrap this up, I'm going to stick around and see the sights. Maybe go on one of those tours of the stars homes."

xxxXXXxxx

The sun was shining, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, it wasn't too hot anymore (though it had been earlier; it was July in southern California, after all), the grass was pleasant to sit on, and the tree gave just enough shade to make sitting under it pleasant. When all other considerations were ignored, it really was a beautiful day.

And there was a lake where Xander Harris's home town was supposed to be.

It was a beautiful lake. That had to be admitted right away. He... she... damn it. Whatever. Xander was still trying to put off the final decision about the entire male-or-female question. When he landed on the bluff and took his first look around at the valley that supposed to hold Sunnydale, he couldn't quite believe it at first. He'd found LA easily enough, and then just followed the highway north. His first clue that his quest to go home was doomed to failure was the sign. He passed the sign that should have said _Welcome to Sunnydale_ , but instead said _Lake Cachuma Reservoir State Park_ .

So he landed and looked. Really looked, using his new body's senses to their fullest. For a moment, he'd had this ridiculous idea that maybe the town was under all that water. It wasn't. There wasn't any sign of a town at all. Sure, there were cabins in the area, and a small marina, and a beach that was covered in signs that read "No Swimming." But no Sunnydale. He truly was in a strange new world.

And then, when the weight of the isolation, and the adrenaline, and the fear and the stress, and the knowledge that he was about as far away from home as he could be and the fact that he had been given an involuntary sex-change got to be too much again, he sat in the shade of a small grove of pine trees and cried. And then he cried some more, out of a sense of loss and because of the stress and because... he didn't know why because.

He normally didn't cry like this. It wasn't part of his normal stress reaction. He was more of the joke about it and run, but keep a level head type. He was more of a simmering anger type. He wasn't about the screaming and the crying, and it bothered him. The intellectual side of his brain told him that saying_ Its because I'm a girl now and I've got hormone problems_ was sexist and stupid, but he had to admit it was his first thought.

Eventually, he was cried out, and tired. The sun was setting, and Xander felt exhausted. So he sat by under the trees, on the bluff, watching the lights go on in the cabins around the lake, and the people in the boats pull into the marina. He didn't notice the wind, though there was a nice lake-effect breeze that was picking up now that the temperature was going down. He just sat there and watched the world.

Soon enough, he started thinking. Everybody who knew Xander in Sunnydale didn't consider him all that introspective, and would, in fact, have laughed at the idea of Xander just sitting down for a good think. But Xander knew that people saw what they wanted to see, and not all that they saw would be the truth.

An ironic thought, given his current situation.

So he sat and he thought. Just slowly at first. Thinking about the little things. Things like, _So now that I know for sure that Sunnydale doesn't exist here, what am I going to do about food and shelter?_ That was followed by the realization that he hadn't eaten in at least twenty-four hours and wasn't hungry. Or that he really wasn't noticing the temperature anymore, so maybe food and shelter were optional now. That lead to the further realization that, _No, shelter might not be needed as shelter, but he'd still like a place to hang his hat during downtime._ And that thought lead to the realization that he should do something about the fact that he was only wearing a pair of girl's panties.

That lead to thinking about the entire girl-boy thing.

_It was a rutting nightmare. It was a plague. It was a nightmare about a plague._ Here he was, living the dream, and it came with a cost he wasn't sure he wanted to pay. It had always been one of his dreams to be a superhero. Always had been, all the way back to the day when he first discovered superhero comic books. Willow and Willow's mom had dragged Xander along into a used bookstore (even at only nine years old, Willow had been a bookworm). And there was an entire three racks of old comics. Most didn't have covers, or had tears or water stains, but they were selling for only a nickel apiece and Xander had fallen in love. He still remembered his first comic. It was an old, dogeared copy of Green Lantern/Green Arrow that was actually older than he had been when he bought it.

Green Arrow had taught Xander everything he knew about being a hero: do what was right; don't hurt people on purpose, especially people who were weaker than you; watch out for those people who couldn't do it for themselves; help out when you can; and absolutely do not compromise on what is right and wrong. Xander had swallowed every drop of that certain heroic code, and even later, in those pre-Buffy days of being the class loser, he tried to live up to them.

Buffy.

Buffy was the real deal. And honest-to-Betsy superhero. And in proximity of Buffy, he was finally feeling like a hero, if not a superhero. Xander jumped at the chance to help her out. Are you kidding? And over time he discovered that she relied on him to be the one who never gave up. Oh sure, he'd get scared, but he wouldn't stop. Getting scared was normal.

He was scared, now. He was pretty sure he killed two superheroes. Or if not kill them, he probably put them in the hospital. Iron Man especially. He was just a guy in a high tech metal suit. And that SHIELD agent's head, during the escape... it just vaporized. That was gross and disgusting and horrible all at once. Why the hell did that woman have to shoot at him like that?

That brought on a whole new raft of fears. The Avengers were no doubt after him. He knew he gave the game away by telling Black Widow he was going home and that home was California. But California was a big place and he was just one person. He hoped he could stay hidden, but in the comic books they always found the villain eventually. So he figured it was only a matter of time before Thor or Captain America showed up to arrest him again. Xander was sure he didn't want to fight Thor or Captain America. But Xander was just as sure he didn't want to be arrested. The words "No Trial and "For Life" not only scared him, but angered him. It would be cool to meet Captain America, though.

It came down to choices. He figured there were four alternatives: he could find a way to get his old body back and then go home; he could find a way to go home, but stay a girl with superpowers; he could stay here but find a way to get his old body back; and lastly, he could stay and keep the powers and the body.

Somewhere on a non-intellectual level he realized how screwed up this situation really was. He'd always wanted to be a superhero. He liked being a guy. He wanted to go home. He was in the _Marvel Universe_, for crying out loud and how cool was that supposed to be? Dreams he'd made public. Dreams he never told anyone. Nightmareville.

He was no closer to figuring out what he was going to do than he was when he sat down to think.

xxxXXXxxx

The Avengers had taken over a conference room in the Los Angeles federal building. It was only temporary. They'd been waiting for their target to make a move, but so far there hadn't been any sign. It was almost a by definition thing that superheroes, who wouldn't be what they were if they didn't secretly crave the action, hated to just wait around.

"Ah, man... I hate just waiting around." Hank Pym handed a can of Coca-Cola over to Spider-Man, who was already working on his second slice of pizza. He grabbed one for himself and popped the tab. Spider-Man just nodded. He opened his mouth to say something in return, but was cut off by the arrival of Wasp, who was followed into the room by the Sentry. The rest of the Avengers suddenly got very quiet and deliberate, as if they were afraid to accidentally break something.

Spider-Man finally swallowed and said, quietly, "Hale, hale, the gang's all here."

xxxXXXxxx

Xander was still thinking when he finally noticed that the sun was down below the horizon, and all the boats were in. A scattering of lights from the cabins, the park offices, and the traffic crossing the dam at the far end of the lake were the only lights. The moon was new, and when Xander looked at the sky it was like a Van Gogh painting. He took a moment to truly open his eyes and the sky was suddenly bright as day and rippling with colors.

Xander took a moment to locate the planets. He had no idea where they were supposed to be, so he just swept his magnified gaze around until he spotted them. It was supremely cool. Even with his advanced senses, they were still just smudged, colored disks with smaller lights orbiting around them.

The beauty of the sky nearly drove the problems out of his head. "They never show this part of it in the comic books," he said to himself. "There are a few perks to staying Power Girl. Can't deny that." He realized that he was getting used to having superpowers. Would he be able to give them up, if he decided to go back to his original body? Could he give up the ability to have a private planetarium show every night, whenever he wanted? Or never getting a cold again? Could he give up being able to fly? Why didn't the comics ever address these things?

It came to him that there were a lot of aspects of the life of a Kryptonian they never dealt with. Xander twisted a lock of hair around his finger. It was longer than Power Girl's standard Paige boy bob. How was he going to cut this? For that matter, how about his legs? Girls normally shaved their legs, right? Xander ran a hand up one of his legs, and sure enough it came back feeling fuzzy. What did Power Girl do about that? And what about her...

Xander was still contemplating the meaning of the words bikini area when he heard someone coming up the bluff. Two heartbeats, just a bit accelerated. Not trying to be stealthy, and talking to each other as they climbed.

The first voice was saying, "... let me play with the binoculars while we were on the boat. I'm sure I saw her up here. Looked like she was sunbathing."

It was obvious the other person was skeptical. "If she was sunbathing, she wouldn't still be up here, Lewis. Duh!" The second voice was a girl. They sounded like teenagers. "We should totally tell Mom and Dad that you saw a naked woman up here."

"Ah, come on, Lindsey... like you said, she's not going to still be up here. I just want to look around."

Xander thought about whether or not he wanted to be found and decided not. Keeping his eyes on the pair, who looked to be just a couple of years younger than he was, Xander floated upward into the air, making sure he was hidden from them by the bulk of the tree's foliage. He took one last look toward the lake and sighed.

It was peaceful while it lasted. Anyway, it was time to do something about clothing.

xxxXXXxxx

The phone on the conference room table buzzed twice. Black Widow leaned over and hit the talk button. "Yes?"

"We got her." It was Teague Marsh, the SHIELD agent in charge of the LA facility. "She showed up as an unknown on a traffic control radar, and when the LA airport called the Air Force to confirm they had a flight in the area, it was transferred to us. She's in Santa Barbara County. Doesn't seem to be moving much. Back and forth within the same couple of square miles."

"Thank you, Agent Marsh." Wasp turned to her team and gestured, making the whirling 'everybody up' sign. "Let's saddle up, guys." She looked over at Sentry. "You go ahead. We'll meet you there." Sentry looked pained, but nodded. He left the conference room and turned right, heading for the stairs to the roof. The rest followed on his footsteps.

xxxXXXxxx

The girl, Lindsey, shivered as a breeze seemed to come out of nowhere. "Did you hear that? Sounded like a tornado."

The boy, Lindsey's twin brother Lewis, stared at her for a second. "When have you ever heard a tornado?" His examination of the top of the ridge over, he turned to his sister and said, "Okay, let's head back. I just wanted to take a look."

xxxXXXxxx

Ten minutes later, Xander found himself behind one of the cabins, rapidly throwing on the clothes he had just borrowed. The word "stolen" flittered through his head a couple of times, and he repeatedly told his conscience to shut up. So did the words "breaking and entering." Xander sought out a cabin that had evidence of both a man and a woman staying there, but that was currently empty. He'd also been careful to not break into a cabin that had people in it, and if he hadn't had a real need for some clothing he never would have done it at all.

Besides, its not like he stole someone's jewelry. It was just an oversized t-shirt and a pair of jeans, but it would do. The shirt was big enough to cover his bust, and hung too low at the neck and shoulders, but it would do. The jeans were just a bit large, too, and he'd have to continually pull them up, but at least they covered his behind and wouldn't tear to shreds the first time he moved his legs. They were too short and made him look like he was expecting a flood, but that didn't matter. Another cabin had a clothesline made of nylon rope behind it. He pulled a length from the poles they were attached to, and he had a belt.

He'd just finished tying it in place when a floodlight lit up the back yard of the cabin. Xander froze. A man stepped out holding a shotgun, and the two stared at each other for a moment. Then the man spoke in that slow, southern drawl native to Texas or Oklahoma or some other place with John Wayne and cowboys. "Missy, just what do you think you're doing with my clothes line?"

Xander was silent for a moment. "Sorry, I... um..."

"Right. You don't move. You don't move an inch." The man fished in one of his pockets for a cell phone, punched three numbers (Xander could hear the tones), and waited. In second, he was talking again. "Yeah, I have a prowler at my cabin. I'm at Cabin 18 out on Lake Cachuma... yes, that's right. No, she's still here. No, I'm not in danger, I got my shotgun with me. No, she's not armed. Because I've got her covered. With my shotgun. Of course. I caught her vandalizing my clothes line. I have no idea. Just send someone out. No problem. She's female, anywhere between five nine and six foot. Blonde hair just past shoulder level... Okey doke. You got it."

The man ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket. Xander, for his part, hadn't moved. "A couple of Sheriff's deputies will be out here shortly. You can tell it to them when they get there. Why don't you come over and sit down on one of these deck chairs and we can wait."

Xander came to a decision. Sighing, he said, "Thank you for the invitation, but I have to be going. Say hello to the deputies for me, though." And then he took off into the sky, which shocked the man so badly that he dropped his shotgun.

xxxXXXxxx

"Miss van Dyne? This is Agent Marsh."

Wasp sat up straighter in the co-pilot's chair as she answered the radio. "Go ahead, Agent Marsh."

"Ma'am, we just intercepted a 911 call involving vandalism at a state park in Santa Barbara County. The suspect matches the description of the target."

"Roger, thank you." Wasp turned to Hank Pym, who was once again flying the plane. "Vandalism? That's a little petty for someone who can knock Tony into the dirt, don't you think?"

Pym had nothing to say about that, so he kept quiet.

xxxXXXxxx

Xander was a mile in the air, headed south. While the guy with the shotgun talked to the cops, he'd come up with a plan of action. Step one: get the heck out of dodge. Step two: get to Los Angeles. Step three: figure out step three once he was in Los Angeles, and hope that step three included finding a place to stay, and maybe a temporary job, just until he figured out what he wanted to do and so he had some money in his pockets.

"Money is going to be a real problem." Xander said to himself. "If Alexander Harris was a TV character in this world, his social was nothing more than a -" His conversation with himself was interrupted when a glowing, man-shaped freight train slammed into him at Mach 4.

xxxXXXxxx

Wasp listened to the radio for a moment, then turned to report to her team. "Sentry is engaging. He estimates he should have her under control in less than a minute."

"And if he doesn't have her under control in less than a minute?"

For a guy who joked around so much, Janet van Dyne said to herself, Spider-Man could be amazingly cynical. "That's why we're following him. Just in case."

xxxXXXxxx

Xander bounced twice before rolling to a stop. Each bounce sent her at least fifty feet into the air and covered a good quarter mile distance. His final roll lasted for nearly a mile. It was embarrassing, but it didn't hurt. Not that much, anyway. Carefully standing back up, he dusted the dirt and plant matter off of his clothes and looked up. Standing in the air above him, looking down with an expression of sneering contempt on his face, was a man in a yellow and black costume, sporting a blue cape.

They held their respective positions for several seconds, neither moving or saying a word. Finally, it was Xander who broke the silence.

"You know, I think you're new. I have absolutely no idea who you are supposed to be. What are you? Some cheap Superman rip-off?"

The man in yellow continued to sneer. "Save the insults, girl. I'm here to bring you back to SHIELD. You can't win, so you might as well not even try_** tOOF!**_"

From a standing start, Xander leapt up, grabbed the man by his right ankle, and swung him into the ground. Keeping hold of the ankle, he again swung the man in yellow, this time over Xander's head to drive him into the ground again, and then again. And again. And again. And then finally, with a twirl fast enough to alter the local wind currents, Xander threw the man in the yellow suit as far as she could.

"That should take care of that. Hope he _gerk_!" The man was back, again slamming into her at top speed. Xander felt the man's hand around his neck and felt his feet leave the ground. The man in the yellow suit was holding him up by the neck with one hand.

"That was a very stupid, stupid mistake, girl." Those words were followed by a golden flash as Xander's attacker brought his fist around and slammed it into Xander's face. Xander's vision blurred for a moment, and blood spurted from her nose with a crunching sound that told Xander that the nose in question was likely now broken. For the first time since coming to this world, Xander Harris was in pain. Honest to God pain.

The man hauled his fist back for another go, but Xander had decided he had enough. Being attacked twice in the same day, and this time by some jerk who he'd never seen before, was the straw on the camel's broken back. No, this time Xander wasn't in shock, overwhelmed by the stress... he was angry. Still hanging from the man's other fist, Xander brought his hand up to block the punch. He caught the man's fist in his own and held it there for a moment. The man's angered expression drained away, turning to shock as Xander not only stopped the first cold, but started to squeeze it and squeeze it _hard_. Xander brought the other hand up and began gouging at the yellow man's eyes. That got the intended reaction. Xander found himself dropped to the ground as the yellow jerk dropped him.

The two stood and considered one another for a while. "You know buddy, you're right. A mistake was made here tonight, but not by me." In his head, Xander was trying to figure out a way to put this joker down. He was feeling himself begin to get tired. The other guy was surprised, but still looked as fresh as a daisy.

His opponent moved in to punch, and Xander ducked aside, then tagged the man's face twice with a quick jab. He wasn't able to put as much power as he liked into them, but Xander smiled when the yellow newcomer's nose started bleeding. "Turn about's fair play, jackass!"

Again Xander's attacker moved in to strike, and Xander brushed his fist aside and kicked the man in the yellow costume in the balls, as hard as Xander could possibly manage. Xander nodded his head as this unknown new guy he'd been fighting sank like a submarine that had been fitted with screen doors. The guy just lay there groaning. Xander rolled his eyes, honestly tired now, and not only that, but his nose hurt like a bitch. Xander took four steps past the fallen man, then cursed. The Avengers had just arrived.

"I just can't catch a break!" he said. Xander gingerly wiped blood from his upper lip as the heroes arrayed themselves in front of him. He recognized most of them, though he was wondering who the guy was that looked sort-of like Spider-Man was. And Hank Pym was back in the Yellowjacket suit? They were all staring at Xander with a slightly stunned look on their face. Xander would have found it funny, were the circumstances different. Oh well... now was not the time.

"Okay..." It was almost a wheeze. Xander was getting more tired by the second. "I take it the yellow guy was with you. I didn't want to fight anyone, really. But if we're going to do this, let's do this. Who's next?"

"There is no next!" A voice sounded from behind him, and Xander whirled. The man in yellow was standing. Obviously in pain, but standing. "I have the power of a million exploding suns at my fingertips! I am always two seconds ahead! I always win!" And with that he unleashed a great, burning beam of energy from his hands. It struck Xander... who stood there in wonder, utterly unharmed. The bruises that were just beginning to form faded. His nose, which had definitely been broken, stopped bleeding and healed itself. The various little scratches were gone. And Xander wasn't tired anymore. Quite the opposite. He felt hyper, like Willow after a double-espresso. Almost intoxicated.

The man in yellow stood there, staring at Xander in confusion. Xander laughed as the guy stared at his hand for a second and then back to Xander. Xander was doing the same thing, because he had just noticed that he was glowing. Just a bit, with a soft white radiance. The man in yellow growled and rushed forward. Almost casually, Xander back-handed him into the air hard enough to sail over the nearby mountains and vanish from sight. The expenditure of energy was enough to actually dim Xander's glow slightly.

Xander turned around and stared at the Avengers for a moment. None of them moved, but all of them were staring right at Xander. Xander stared right back, his gaze finally settling on the Black Widow. "I asked you to leave me alone, didn't I?" The Widow nodded. "Good. That's all I want. Just leave me alone. Now, you can probably track me to LA, so I'll go ahead and tell you I'm heading there. But I'm not looking to hurt anyone. I don't want to fight you. And I don't want to have to do this again. Please. I am begging you. Just leave me alone, okay? I just want to get home, and you guys aren't making it easy for me to figure out how. I'm... I'm not doing too well right now and need some time to figure some things out. Just... don't."

And with that, Xander lifted off like a rocket, leaving a trail of radiance in the sky behind him.

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note:** This story was inspired by A New World in My View by P.H. Wise. Some background plot elements have been borrowed from that story. Out of everything else, if you recognize it, its probably either Mutant Enemy's toy, Marvel Comics' toy, or else DC Comics' toy.


	6. A Strange Place to Find a Noble Spirit

**What a Strange Place to Find a Noble Spirit**

xxxXXXxxx

_"Heroes strive. That's what makes them heroes. Some succeed, some fail, most have mixed results. The results don't matter. The person who takes the stand against tyranny and in the end sacrifices himself to the cause is just as heroic as the man who takes the stand and in the end is victorious. It is the effort that's heroic, as I see it. Win or lose, I admire those who fight the good fight." - John D. MacDonald_

xxxXXXxxx

The Wasp immediately started issuing orders. "Simon, get after her. Slow her down even if you can't stop her. Hank you too. Give Simon all the support you can." Wonder Man and Yellowjacket immediately nodded and took off, flying after the still-glowing girl as quickly as they could. She nodded at her two remaining teammates. "Natasha, you and Peter go check on Sentry. Make sure he's all right and see if he needs medical attention. Wherever he landed, that is. While you're doing that, check the reserve roster and find someone who's not only still friendly with us, but who won't mind coming out to give us a hand. We re going to need some backup on this."

The Black Widow gave Spider-Man a quick glance, and they both nodded. "What are you going to do, Janet?" Spider-Man asked.

"I'm going to help out Simon and Hank." With that, the Avenger's deputy team-leader shrank to four inches tall and took off into the air.

The remaining Avengers ran back to the quinjet.

"Widow, this might seem a bad time to ask, but you do know how to fly this thing, right?" Spider-Man asked. "I'm... uh... I'm not a pilot. At all. Last time Tony tried to train me, I crashed his simulator nine times."

The Black Widow merely rolled her eyes. "Come on..."

xxxXXXxxx

Xander wasn't paying attention, but he did notice when something small hit supersonic speeds behind him from the bowshock of its passage through the air. _Okay... think... think... which of the Avengers can fly that fast, outside of Iron Man and this new jerk-off?_ Xander asked himself. _Wonder Man, maybe? _Xander stood upright in mid-flight, and turned around. Flying backward, he was able to confirm that he was being chased by Wonder Man, who was only a couple of hundred yard behind. Further back, maybe a mile or two out, Xander could see Yellowjacket and the Wasp flying as hard as they could. Neither of the shrinking heroes were able to keep up with Wonder Man, much less keep up with him, but they were trying.

For a moment, he considered attacking. Just grabbing Wonder man by the arm and tossing him into orbit. Outside of having to face the asshole in the yellow suit, Xander figured Wonder Man was the closest thing the Avengers had left who they could possibly call a threat to him, and getting him out of the picture might divert the Avengers long enough for Xander to disappear into a crowd.

Thing is, he didn't want to. He was telling the truth when he'd said he just wanted to be left alone.

It exasperated him. He scowled and wished there was a can for him to kick, here in mid-air, or a rock to throw. With a muttered, God damn it. Xander turned back around and flattened out for greater aerodynamic flow. According to his best guess, at his current flight speed, he was only ten minutes or so outside of LA. But he knew he could do better.

xxxXXXxxx

Wonder Man kept his eyes on the girl. She was easy to track, as she was still glowing, just a little bit. And only half a mile or so ahead of him. She was also pushing Wonder Man to his limits; his beltjets fed off his own ionic energy for power, and he had endless supplies of that power, but if he tried to push any more of it through the jets, they'd melt. They were nearly redlined as it was.

He thought it was a shame about the girl, really. She was a nice-looking, and young, and didn't give off a "Hi, I'm evil" sort of vibe. The entire thing looked like one of those "Has her whole life in front of her situations, all fouled up because Tony Stark and SHIELD had their collected heads up their collected alimentary canals" situations If he could, Wonder Man knew he'd be fighting on the side of Captain America and the resistance. But that rabid bitch Maria Hill knew where his bodies were buried, and was forcing him to help Stark arrest innocent people whose only crime was to be born different.

He'd never felt more ashamed of himself in his entire life than he did right now. Even during his short tenure as a supervillain did he feel this bad. But there wasn't any way for him to...

"Oh shit," he said to himself. The girl's air speed had slowed because she'd gone upright and had turned around to stare at him as he closed the distance between them. Not wanting to lose sight of her, he quickly glanced over his shoulder and back. Hank and Janet were nowhere to be seen. So it was just him and a girl who had backhanded Sentry into orbit.

He watched the girl's face as he continued to close with her. She was staring at him, and if he was reading her face correctly, she was angry and frustrated. Nothing to do about it now. Only about a hundred more yards to go...

The girl turned around in mid-air, flattened horizontally, and suddenly was gone. Not just "pulled away from him swiftly," but _gone_. Out of sight completely. And in less than a second, Wonder Man was tossed around violently by a cascade of shock waves. His ears rang from the multiple sonic booms. He found himself plowing into the turf, swatted out of the air like a butterfly caught up in the wake of a speeding car.

As he picked himself up and dusted himself off, Wonder Man tried to figure out exactly what he'd just seen. He was halfway convinced she'd teleported. After all, he'd seen speedsters before. This was nothing like that. The girl had just vanished, and in her place was an implosion of air that felt like a gigantic bomb had gone off. Quicksilver wasn't capable of that kind of acceleration, and Quicksilver was the fasted person he knew. But he didn't think so. If he had to guess, he'd say she knew she was being pursued, took note of the pursuit, and then evaded said pursuit by being massively faster than what was chasing her.

He tried to lift off, only to find that his belt-jets had, in fact, slagged themselves. "Great. Just to add one more bit of fun for the evening." He looked around, just to make sure, and shrugged. Then he tapped his earbud. "Wasp, this is Wonder Man. I'm grounded. The girl is gone."

"What happened, Simon?" The Wasp's voice was tinnier and more radio-like when she was shrunk. "You're grounded? Did she attack you?"

"Negative, negative. I have not been attacked." He unhooked his belt and rolled it in his hands. "She just... look, she's faster than we suspected, and my jets couldn't handle the strain of keeping up with her and they burned out. I think there's another belt for me on the quinjet. Otherwise, I'm a ground-pounder now."

"Roger. Hank and I see you. We'll be at your 20 shortly." Despite no one being around to see, Wonder Man nodded in response. Then Wasp's voice sounded in his ear again. "Wasp to quinjet. Natasha, have you picked up Sentry yet?" It took a couple of tries before she got a response, and by the time someone had responded, both Wasp and Yellowjacket had found Wonder Man and returned to their normal size.

"We have him, Janet." Black Widow reported over the radio. "He's... I think he's sidelined for a while. He doesn't look hurt, but he sounds like he's gone into some sort of fugue over being beaten down by someone. I'm not a psychologist, but I think he's having a hard time getting over no longer being the biggest gun in the battle. Spider-Man's trying to talk him down."

Wasp sighed. "Roger. Come pick us up. We'll head to LA and try to pick up the girl's trail. And Natasha? I'm sorry for getting huffy with you about not stopping this girl. I'm beginning to wonder if she can be stopped at all."

Wonder Man waited for the Wasp to finish before speaking. "Janet, why are we spending so much time on this girl? There have got to be dozens of dangerous criminals out there plotting to destroy the world, but we're out here chasing down a scared girl who hasn't intentionally hurt anyone that I can tell. This just feels... wrong somehow."

Yellowjacket jumped in immediately. "She's a fugitive from justice, Simon. And you saw what she did to Sentry. How can you say that she..."

"Other than an alleged violation of the Superhuman Registration Act, what crime has she committed, Hank? Tell me that, please."

"How about the fact that while she was escaping from lawful custody, someone died. Escape is a felony. She's legally responsible for the man's death." Yellowjacket wasn't backing down.

Wonder Man was silent for a long while. Long enough for the quinjet to appear and set down nearby. Just as they were boarding the aircraft, Wonder Man finally responded. "Personally I would think that the jackass guard who fired a second hyper-bullet after she saw that the first one was ineffective, thus causing the ricochet that killed the agent, would be more responsible than this girl. It just... it just feels like we're scapegoating her because she got away."

Yellowjacket stopped, still on the boarding ramp into the quinjet, and poked Wonder Man in the chest angrily. "You know, Simon? You're right. SHIELD is scapegoating her because she got away from SHIELD. Me? I'm after her because she almost killed two of my friends. Think about that for a minute."

"Don't make it personal, Hank." Wonder Man walked past the other man and into the aircraft. "It's unprofessional."

"You're kidding yourself, Simon. It's always personal."

xxxXXXxxx

Xander made sure to slow to a speed a little less hurricaney and a lot more manageable before he got to the outskirts of Los Angeles. He didn't want to break any windows or knock any innocent night birds out of the sky.

LA was huge. Very impressive. Xander hung in the air two thousand feet up and just looked at the place. Really looked at it. There were lights everywhere. Cars on the streets, stores that were still open. Offices where people were working late. Theaters. Restaurants. It made Sunnydale look like Mayberry.

Xander's only experience with Los Angeles was from watching shows on television. And even then, he realized, a lot of the time Los Angeles was actually Vancouver or Seattle or Toronto and not actually Los Angeles. Which meant, of course, that he didn't know anything about Los Angeles. He found the Hollywood Sign easily enough, what with it being on the side of a mountain, and from his lofty altitude he could see the classic Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters building that always showed up in old Dragnet re-runs. Dodger Stadium was obvious. And, with the help of some telescopic enhancement, he could see the spires of Disneyland's castle.

The rest of the city was a pure mystery to him.

He cruised until he spotted the busiest street he could find, outside of one of the freeways, and landed in an alley just off of it. From there it was just a matter of acting like everyone else and hoping no one noticed he was barefoot and wearing someone else's clothing. Hollywood Boulevard at night was all neon and shops stores and clubs and restaurants and offices and places that one really needed money to fit into. But there was enough of a crowd to lose yourself in, so he did.

The problem of money reared its ugly head again. Xander Harris was a fictional character in this world. A character on a television show. (Then and there he made it his life's ambition to watch the show and see what they got right and what they didn't.) This meant that getting a job might be a problem because he effectively didn't have a social security number in this universe. Even the local DoubleMeat Palace wouldn't hire him without a social. Thinking about it, he realized that it was more likely that the social security number he thought of as his actually belonged to someone else. That made him smirk... _Sure, just toss in identity theft on top of evading federal custody or whatnot._

Unfortunately, he might have to do just that until... what? What until? Until he got out of this dimension? Until he realized he was permanently stuck here and tried to make a go of it? Xander sighed heavily. He still haven't even worked that problem out.

But he needed some way of making money. Sure, he'd noticed that he hadn't been hungry since he woke up this morning, and if he remembered correctly from the comics Kryptonians just didn't have to eat that often, but they still ate occasionally. Besides, he'd like to have a place to occasionally sleep that wasn't an alley or under an overpass, or on a rooftop. Not to mention clothes that actually fit him. There was something to think about. He'd need clothes that fit the body, not the image the mind had of what the body should look like. No one was going to hire him anyway if the only thing he had to wear was a baggy t-shirt and a too-large pair of jeans.

Xander stopped at a street-corner and looked up at the sign. Wilcox Avenue. Never heard of it. He looked around at his fellow pedestrians, and most of them looked like they had somewhere to go. He watched them for a little while, even after the light had changed. Normal folk who looked as straight and narrow as they come. Goths. Punks. A midget being followed around by a camera crew. A guy wearing one of those sandwich boards that read 'Jesus Is Lord and The End is Coming .

And here he was, in a stolen shirt and no shoes, wondering how to proceed with his life. He kept walking, taking note of his surroundings. A 24 hour drug store, a coffee bar, a magic shop selling tricks and costumes. A hair salon. A two-man busker team who were doing a really great rendition of Who'll Stop the Rain by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

He was beginning to feel very country mouse in this big city.

"Hey, beautiful! How you doin'?" The voice cut through his revery. Xander turned around to find himself being followed by a pair of young men, maybe in their 20s, whose clothing style lead him to believe that these guys were really huge _Miami Vice_ fans. They were both smiling at her in the same way a shark smiles at an amber-jack. The one on the right was busily looking her up and down, while the one of the left actually took his eyes off her ass long enough to meet Xander's gaze. "You look like you're new in town, he said. Wha's your hurry? Where you goin'?"

Xander couldn't help it. He burst out laughing.

xxxXXXxxx

Maria Hill, Director of SHIELD was livid. "So what you are telling me is that the Avengers once again let a teenaged girl slip through their fingers." She ground her teeth together in anger. This is why she hated superheroes. They were unreliable, uncontrollable, and potentially dangerous, and the sooner each and every one of them was on the leash the better. She stared at Janet van Dyne's image, transmitted to the Helicarrier from the Los Angeles SHIELD office, and suppressed the urge to order the woman arrested.

The Wasp wasn't having any of it. "Feel free to spin this anyway you want, Director Hill," she said. "You're going to do so no matter what anyone says. But we both know the truth. You sent us after an Omega-level metahuman after telling us she was just an Alpha. You can't blame us when it turns out that someone who is stronger than Sentry and as hard to hurt as the Juggernaut is difficult to apprehend. And you never told us that she's faster than any speedster we've seen so far."

"We didn't know. For most of her stay with us, she was unconscious. In the two days she wasn't, she never demonstrated that kind of power. Not until she walked out of our facilities."

"That should have been your first clue." Hill saw Wonder Man approach, holding a file. He and Wasp conferred just quietly enough for the microphones to not pick up what they were saying. When they were done, Wasp turned back to the camera. "We're going to do a search of the city, but my guess is we aren't likely to hear from her for a while unless she does something stupid and flamboyant like taking down a bank or holding a school hostage. And your own report on her says she's not the 'mad criminal' type." Wasp reached up and deactivated the camera, leaving Hill looking at a blank screen.

"God! I _hate_ that woman!" Hill fumed. The agents around her busied themselves with anything they could find to avoid her notice.

xxxXXXxxx

"God! I _hate_ that woman!" Janet van Dyne fumed. The other Avengers around her busied themselves with anything they could find to avoid her notice. All except Simon. But then, Simon was indestructible, immortal, and fearless. "Okay, Simon, give me that again?"

Wonder Man gestured with the file. "This is everything we knew about Harris before the dust-up this evening. I'm still trying to figure out what she did wrong to warrant the attention. I mean, sure, a guard died during her escape, but that was friendly fire. And I'd say a pretty good case for negligence seeing as how the SHIELD agent who actually pulled the trigger had already seen bullets bounce off of the back of Harris's head." He frowned. "I mean, she appears out of nowhere above US airspace and falls to the ground. They found her in a costume, in a crater, and made a bunch of assumptions."

Janet sighed. "Yeah? Okay, so?"

"Janet, this girl's been railroaded. There's been no investigation. No one ever bothered to even ask her how she ended up in the upper atmosphere. No one's asked her how long she's had her powers, or where she got them from." He too a deep breath, obviously bothered by it all. "Hell, they haven't even tried to verify her identity. We've got a fingerprint card here, taken while she was unconscious, but it doesn't match any known record. But there's only a cursory missing person's inquiry in here. There's no record anyone did a NAMUP search, or NCMEC. Its like..." Wonder Man was silent for a moment. "Its like... its like Hill decided, 'Hey, we've got an unknown meta here, so let's crucify her.' Why the hell are we assisting in a witch hunt?"

"Because its the law. She broke the law."

"Did she?" Wonder Man asked, clearly skeptical. "What law did she break? Felony murder? The death of a SHIELD agent during an escape from unlawful imprisonment is tragic, but it was still unlawful imprisonment. They had no reason to arrest her, hold her, or threaten her with the Gulag." Wonder Man leaned in close, his voice cutting like a razor: "She. Was. Innocent."

Wasp wouldn't meet his eyes. "Well, we certainly put an end to that, didn't we?"

xxxXXXxxx

Both men wore puzzled looks. "Wha' chu laughing for? the one on the right asked."

That just made Xander laugh even more loudly. "I'm sorry, guys, but here I was, walking down Hollywood, and a couple of stereotypes from the movies come up to talk to me. Really. Thanks. Its been a day, and this has been the best part of it." Now that Xander had stopped walking and had turned around, the men had shifted their gazes to her face... with occasional sharp glances south. For some reason, he found that funny too. That he was aware of, he'd never been 'checked out' before, by any guy or girl.

The one on the right was still talking. "We just wanted to talk to you, that's all. We saw you walkin'; you looking like you might need a little help. I mean, you got no shoes, you in someone else's dirty clothes. But we can see you pretty fine under that grunge. So maybe Sanchez and I can help you out."

Mister Left-Side grinned and nodded. "Yeah, help you out."

Xander's eyes narrowed. "Help me out, how exactly?"

Mister Right-Side held up his hands as if to say 'Its all good' and grinned, still radiating a sort of sleazy friendliness. "Well, we figure you look like you just jumped off a bus, and you ain't doin' so well, so hey, how about we clue you in to a unique career opportunity that could have you making up to a hunnert thousand dollars a year if you work it right."

"Now, we ain't hustlin' you, and we ain't gonna try and turn you into a streetwalker or get you hooked nothin'." And then it was Mister Left-Side's turn. "We just saw you walkin by and I said to Tony... he's Tony, by the way, I'm Sanchez... but I said to Tony, Tony, a girl like that has a future. So can we talk to you about your future?"

Xander just looked at them for a moment. They still weren't reading as a threat, but there was that slime-factor going on. "What do you want specifically?"

"Good... good!" Mister Right-Side, Tony, laughed. "We're negotiatin'. This is good. Anyway, given you look a little rough, I figured I'd make you a deal. You give us one hour of your time, sitting in a public place and listening to our proposal, and we give you five hunnert dollars. That's five hunnert dollars, and all you got to do is listen to us. Hey, and if you don't like what you're hearin', you say so and everybody walks away, and you walk away with the five hunnert, and that's got to be enough to put you in a room an off the streets for a couple of nights, right?"

"So whaddaya think?" Sanchez asked. "Won't even have to get in a car. We're thinkin' we go right over there to the diner and get you sumpen to eat. Lookin' like you do, you muss be hungry, right?" The man pointed toward the next intersection, where Xander could clearly see a Denny's open for business. "I mean, I ain't never been homeless myself, but I remember bein' poor, and being hungry is part of being poor, right?"

"You're going to buy me dinner, and all I have to do is listen to you, and you'll pay me five hundred dollars just to listen?" Xander repeated. "What's the catch?"

"Hey, no catch. No catch at all. Tony and I are respectable businessmen, and we like to treat people fair. For a person of your obvious advantages," and with this Sanchez's eyes definitely dropped to Xander's chest and stayed there for several seconds. "Let's just say that we believe you catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar, right?"

xxxXXXxxx

Black Widow yawned expertly. " I am officially exhausted. Just thought you should all know. I'm getting too old for these 30 hour days."

The Wasp nodded. "Right. Okay... those of us who need sleep should hit the hay. Simon, if you wouldn't mind, stick around in case some of the reservists come in, okay?"

Wonder Man responded with a random wave. He was tapping away at the computer. "Probably playing minesweeper or solitaire," Wasp muttered.

He wasn't, in fact, playing minesweeper or solitaire. Wonder Man was digging into SHIELD records regarding their target. He wasn't able to get very far; he was an actor and a stuntman, not a computer hacker. But he did find out that it had been Director Hill herself who ordered that this girl be immediately incarcerated in the Gulag. Seemed the Agency Head had a real hard on for superheroes in general, and for super-powered teenagers who tried to fight crime in particular. Something to do with a case that went really, really sour early in her career.

He sometimes wished he still got headaches, just so he could rub his eyes. The situation called for a little eye-rubbing. This girl really never had a chance, did she?

xxxXXXxxx

"You're serious. You're really not joking about this?" Xander ordinarily loved the pot roast at Denny's. Right now, his was growing colder and colder on the plate. The proposal put forward by the two men had done the impossible and stopped him from even thinking about eating.

"Oh yeah. I mean, no offense, but a girl built like you're built? You know... long legs, great ass, and a huge pair of tits? I bet chu even got washboard abs. You can write your own ticket! You'd probably be pulling in a thousand a scene for just the straight sex." Tony took another bite of his steak. "Double or even triple it if you are willing to do, you know, the more exotic stuff like anal or a DP-scene. Of course, if you're into the real kinky stuff, the money get's really high. But I wouldn't suggest you do that stuff until you get some experience under your belt. Or, you know... if you're already into it. So each film you do, you have... let's say three scenes. That's three thousand a film. You shoot three films a week, that's nine grand a week. Say you work maybe forty weeks out of every fifty two, that's $360,000 a year." He shrugged. "Of course, you're probably going to want to have more time off than that. You work as much as you wanna work. One of our clients only does two films a year, for example. She's a house wife in her downtime. Single mother. Works for us only when she needs the extra cash."

Sanchez was nodding all along, but he stopped, suddenly. "Hey, Alex... you need to eat. You're dinner's getting' cold. Don't say nothin' yet. Just go ahead and enjoy dinner." The comment caused Tony to suddenly look embarrassed. He'd been talking straight through and had apparently utterly ignored the fact that Xander had only taken a single bite of his dinner.

Xander took a couple of bites of his roast. It was still good, despite being room-temperature. What surprised him was that, as sleazy and disgusting as the suggestion had been, the two men hadn't cajoled him, lobbied him, or did anything other than make the offer to him. They had financial statements on them showing what sort of money was being made, and had even mentioned an insurance plan.

But porn? Really?

"I... uh... wow... I mean... um... thank you for the meal and all, but I don't think I could... um... I mean, I'm still a virg-" his voice cut out as he realized what he was about to say to two strangers. The one secret that no teenage boy would ever admit to.

Of course, as far as the two men were concerned, they'd been talking to a teenaged girl. When Xander uttered this nugget of information, both of them suddenly sat back. Their faces grew very serious, and they seemed to study Xander.

Sanchez looked at Tony, and then back to Xander. "Anthony," he said. "I do believe we forgot to ask young Alexandra here one vital question. I mean, looking the way you do, we both just assumed. You're still a kid, aren't you?"

"A kid? No, I'm not a kid. Why?" Xander's response was phrase as if he considered the question a joke, but no one was fooled.

"I mean you're under eighteen. You are, right?"

"I'll be eighteen next January."

Tony sat back and pushed the rest of his steak away. The man put a hand to his head and let out the longest breath he'd ever seen anyone ever take. The two men looked at each other again, and then shrugged.

"Okay, then," Tony said. "Forget everything we just said to you. Pretend we been talkin' about why you ran away from home and how it'll be okay and you can always go home once you work out things and all that shit. Pretend like we haven't been trying to convince a minor to be a porn actress, okay? Because that's just wrong. It's our fault. We ain't mad at you, but we try to run as clean a business as we can. No drugs. No diseases. No kids."

Sanchez was still nodding. "Don't worry... we'll still give you the five hunnert. And here." He dug out his wallet and searched around among the cards he carried; finally, he pulled one card out and held it for Xander to take. It read _Saint Bridget's Home for Lost Girls_, and had an address and telephone number. At Xander's curious look, Sanchez explained. "Its a shelter for girls who run away from home. They'll give you a bed and at least one hot meal a day as long as you're willing to do some housework like sweeping or doing dishes and put up with a little church." He paused in his explanation. "You Catholic?"

Xander shook his head.

"Hah. That's okay, you will be." Tony laughed. "Look, kid... they're strict about no drugs, and if you end up tricking and drag something bad back with you like an STD or an angry john or heaven help you a pimp, you're out on your ass, but if you keep your nose clean, well, its better than sleeping under an overpass. You go there and stay safe, okay?"

"I don't know what to say." Xander really, really didn't.

"Say you'll go and be safe. And hey, who knows... maybe we'll see you again after January. But if not, then you have a good life, kid." Sanchez waved the waitress over. "Hey, let me have the check, and bring this young lady a piece of pie or something. She needs it."

While Sanchez was talking, Tony took out a wad of cash and peeled four $100 dollar bills and two $50 dollar bills from his roll. He stacked the money under a napkin and pushed it to Xander's side of the table.

Xander hesitantly reached for it, and when he did Tony put his hand over Xander's. Their eyes met for a moment. "If I see you in a month out on some street-corner trying to earn enough money for your next hit of smack while livin' under the thumb of some chulo, I'm gonna be very, very disappointed in you. And call your folks. Even if you can' go home, they deserve to know you're alive. Hokay?"

Xander just nodded.

"Now, I want you to take this money and you buy yourself some clothes and some shoes, and you squirrel the rest of this away. This money is not for you to get high on. Hokay?"

Xander nodded again.

"Good. See you around, Miss Alex." And with that, the men stood and walked out of the restaurant.

xxxXXXxxx

******Author's Note: **This story was inspired by "A New World in My View" by P.H. Wise. Some background plot elements have been borrowed from that story. Out of everything else, if you recognize it, its probably either Mutant Enemy's toy, Marvel Comics' toy, or else DC Comics' toy.

**Author's Note the Second: ** The government bureaus Wonder man refers to above, NAMUP (the National Center for Missing and Unidentified Persons) and NCMEC (the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children). There are real world saints moving among us, folks.

**Author's Note the Third: **Tony and Sanchez are also based on real people, though I have changed their names to protect the smarmy. They are a pair of attorneys who run a talent agency for porn stars. Despite the sleaziness of their trade, they look out for their clients, fight for premium wages, offer health insurance that includes eye exams and dentist visits, and even have a profit sharing program for their highest earners, and make sure their clients stay drug- and disease-free. I met them while researching a book, and while I wouldn't go so far as to call them friends, it would be fair to call them friendly acquaintances.


	7. The Wounded Recognize the Wounded

**The Wounded Recognize the Wounded**

xxxXXXxxx

_"A hero is no braver than anyone else around him. He's just braver for five minutes longer." - Ralph Waldo Emerson_

xxxXXXxxx

Not being that familiar with Los Angeles, it took Xander several hours to find Saint Bridget's Home for Lost Girls. He considered just finding a hotel and getting a room, but then decided against it. Might as well save the money for clothes and a pair of shoes, he figured, not to mention incidentals like a toothbrush or a hairbrush.

Somehow he knew that simply flying would be dangerous. The Avengers were still out there, and they'd been actively hunting him last time he saw them. Lots of people who could fly on that team, and Xander was certain that the sudden appearance of a flying blonde girl would be a dead giveaway.

It only occurred to him after he found the place that he could have hopped a cab. Instead, Xander got directions from one of the waitresses, and then walked. He stopped at every all-night drugstore and 24-hour convenience store along the way, and once he even got directions (and a job offer) from the doorman at a strip joint. As a result, he had a good, working knowledge of how to get to the place from Hollywood Boulevard... but not anywhere else in the city. One of the items he added to his list was a bicycle. Good way to get around, a bicycle. You didn't need a license, and he somehow didn't think he'd get all tired out riding it around town.

All that said, the sign on the door stopped him. Saint Bridget's Home For Lost Girls , just as he expected, along with the address and the phone number, and a note that they were affiliated with the local parish. And the words Business Hours 5 am to 9 pm. No Admittance After Lights Out . Xander didn't know what time it was, but it had to be closing in on 2 or 3 in the morning.

Xander checked on the (non-existent) traffic, then stepped out into the road to get a better look at the place. The building had three stories, and was made of brick. It had obviously started life as a warehouse of some sort. All the windows had bars, and there was a cage blocking the front doors that had been padlocked from the inside.

Idly, Xander hoped their fire prevention systems were up-to-date.

A ten-foot-tall wooden fence surrounded the back half of the building, giving it a back yard of sorts. Looking through the fence, he could see an above-ground garden, a carefully locked down selection of garden tools, and a dog house with a large and impressive looking Saint Bernard sleeping in it.

The neighborhood the shelter was not in what Xander would call a vacation spot. Quite the opposite in fact. Granted, it wasn't the vampire-infested rat-hole that some parts of Sunnydale were, but he'd bet his last dime that the words gang-related were connected to things that happened here quite often. Lots of graffiti, lots of trash in the streets and on the sidewalk. Alleyways that didn't bear thinking about real closely.

Xander stepped back onto the sidewalk and tried to look inconspicuous as an older man and woman walked by. He noticed they kept their eyes on him as they passed, as if wary of her. _Yeah, that kind of place_, he thought to himself. _Can't trust anyone you don't know really well_. He took another look at the shelter and signed. He'd obviously have to come back after the sun was up. What to do in the meantime? he audibly wondered. Oh well, nothing for it.

He'd seen an all-night diner several blocks back. Maybe he could perch in there, maybe get some soup and a soda and cage a newspaper to read until things livened up again.

xxxXXXxxx

Wonder Man had a legal pad on the table next to the computer, and had been writing things down all night. Questions like, _When did this girl refuse registration?_ and _Was she even aware she needed to register?_ and _Why didn't anyone think it was there duty to make her aware?_ Questions about her identity. On why she would have used a name from a TV show from the 90s. The odds on that actually being her name?

That one had Simon thinking, and thinking hard. People had been named stranger things, after all, and coincidence could always occur. During his time as an actor and a stuntman, he'd met a guy named Harrison Samuel Truman, and it apparently had been a total coincidence because the man had been born (and therefore named) back in 1942, before President Harry S. Truman was even a blip on anyone's awareness. And he knew an actress whose name, no shit, was Santa-Maria Klaus. So it was entirely possible that Alexandra Lavelle Harris wasn't lying about her name. But then why did she claim Sunnydale, California as her home town?

He was intent on figuring this mystery girl out, and if SHIELD and the Avengers didn't have the resources, maybe someone else would. Besides, the girl needed help, and he wasn't exactly in a good position to deliver that help, what with Hill blackmailing him into arresting people like her.

Wonder Man tore the top sheet of his scribble-covered note pad off and, with just a bit of concentration, caused the paper to burst into flame from the heat transfer caused by his ionic energy. Then he he started from the beginning.

Again, he sighed. Too bad just walking up to her and talking in a civilized manner seems out the window.

xxxXXXxxx

Xander was amazed at how brightly lit the diner was, especially in comparison to the darkness of the parking lot. The place was clean, and covered in chrome, and the smells coming from the flattop were phenomenal. He stepped into the place and took a look around, freezing for just a moment when he spotted the two cops. They were both sitting at the counter, sipping on coffee cups and chatting with one of the waitresses. There was a motley assortment of other customers, including a guy who looked like a stereotypical trucker, a couple of biker types, and two handfuls of women who, if they weren't actually hookers, were certainly trying to look the part.

"Just sit anywhere, honey. I'll be right there." The waitress behind the counter nodded and smiled at Xander, waving at the empty seats of the booths and of the rest of the dining counter. Xander smiled back, trying to will the cops to not know anything about him as they turned to look at the newcomer. Xander found a seat at the far end of the bar from the cops and waited. It took a minute, but the waitress behind the counter sauntered over and handed Xander a menu. She was older, probably in her late 40s, and had auburn hair that was graying at the temple. But the smile seemed genuinely friendly.

"How are you doing tonight?" she asked. Without even pausing, for an answer, she continued. "Our soup of the day is cheddar cheese. Daryll made a fresh pot right about midnight. The special is the tuna melt plate; that comes with either french fries or a tossed salad and a drink. Coffee's fresh, but we're out of pie right now. Sorry about that."

Xander just nodded as he took in the name on her tag. He cleared his throat in order to keep from giggling. "You're name is Willow?"

The woman's grin widened. "Yeah. I get asked that a lot. My Mom and Dad were hippies up during the Height-Ashbury scene in San Francisco. So naturally I get named something suitably cosmic. My middle name is 'Sunflower' if you can believe it."

"Wow," Xander laughed.

"Yeah, I know. Great, isn't it?"

Xander had to admit that it was. He knew the odds were long, but asked anyway. "You're last name wouldn't happen to be Rosenberg, would it?"

"Nope. Its Petit. Like the French word for small, but pronounced like what you do to a dog. Pet it." And indeed, that's how she said it. "So what's your name?" That was the million dollar question. The problem was, people saw Xander as the body he inhabited. And if he didn't want to stand out, he'd have to actually go with it.

But he didn't want to play the 'lets pretend to be Xandra' game he played in the SHIELD hospital. So he'd pretend to be a girl. Well, okay... he wasn't pretending. Physically, he was a girl. But still... he made a decision. Because he had to get along and interact with people without them looking at him funny, he'd assume the female identity. " I'm Alexandra. Alexandra Harris. But my friends call me Alex."

"Nice to meet you, Alex. I'll be back in a minute; give you a chance to look at the menu some." And with that, Willow the Waitress headed back up the counter to refresh coffee cups and wipe up spills.

xxxXXXxxx

The mystery about this girl continued to build as Wonder Man continued to dig for information. _For all you know, she's from the land of television, where all the TV characters are real, and it was the writers here on this Earth who got it wrong, _he thought to himself.

He had begun a deep search of the Missing Persons database half an hour ago. It was slow going. There were a lot of missing people out there, and most of their files had been closed. He used his authority as an Avenger to re-open the records. While he waited, he slogged through other databases, pulling related information from almost everywhere, trying to put a picture together about this girl.

Something popped up when he referenced her home town. _Well, isn't that interesting._ Wonder Man reread the trivia snippet twice, still wondering what it meant. Apparently the folks who produced Buffy the Vampire Slayer used an imaginary version of Santa Barbara County as the setting of their show and had set their fictional city of Sunnydale there. More precisely, according to a map used in several of the episodes, the city was located in the middle of the lake the vandalism call had come from. Apparently Xandra Harris had been telling truth when she told everyone she was heading home... there just wasn't any home to go to.

That joke about her stepping out of the television didn't seem to funny anymore. It was ridiculous, but was it ridiculous enough to be real?

After several minutes of consideration, Wonder Man abandoned the thought. No, it was just too silly. She'd run away from somewhere. He'd track her down, and then they'd know who she was. And once they knew who she was, they'd get a handle on how to deal with her, hopefully in a much more pleasant and less painful way than having her boot them around the room.

xxxXXXxxx

"Let me have a bowl of the chili and a coke, if that's okay." Xander smiled at the waitress, Willow, and handed her the menu. "That's all I need tonight. Oh, and is there somewhere I can get a newspaper?"

Willow gave Xander a searching look. "You sure that's all you need?" The look was obviously a sympathetic one, a look that said, 'I've seen a lot of street kids, and I know the signs of desperation.'

"I'm fine." Xander smiled, hoping she wouldn't inquire.

"Okay. If you say so. It'll be right up. I have some pieces of the morning paper back here. I'll bring them back with your chili."

A few minutes later Xander was inattentively eating the chili as he flipped through the newspaper. There were some references he just didn't understand at all. Apparently the president was some yahoo from Texas he'd never heard of; there were constant references to something called the War on Terror , and Pluto was somehow no longer considered a planet. It was confusing. He didn't recognize half the big names the paper referenced. Some sports teams were utterly new and unknown to him... it really was a different world.

The chili was good, though.

Willow the Waitress had handed him a random stack of newspaper sections. He'd made his way through the Entertainment Section (and read with some excitement about a film called Casino Royale ; there hadn't been any decent Bond films back home since License to Kill) and the Sports Section (where he discovered he only recognized about half the team names and the so-called Big Name Athletes ; he had no idea who Barry Bonds was, and was amazed that there was a football team in Pittsburgh); glossed over the financial news and the want ads, and chuckled at the comics. Apparently Hagar the Horrible was interdimensionally funny.

When Xander finally got to the front page, he suddenly understood why he was being chased. In addition to headlines that read _Lab Backlog Dooms 200 Assault Cases_ and _Patients Pay More For Medical Care, Get Less_ the banner read _Captain America Still At Large In Protest Over SRA_ .

Shocked, Xander read the article four times. The SRA mentioned in the headline, the so-called Superhuman Registration Act, made superhumans outlaws just for existing. Superhumans had to register with the federal government, giving away their real identities, and attend some sort of half-assed boot camp. The article didn't say that they were forced to work for the government, but given Xander's experiences with SHIELD, he could guess what happened to people who refused to be volunteered. The article didn't mention the prison he had been threatened with.

However, it did mention that Captain America had rebelled against lawful authority when the enforcers of the law, SHIELD, had decided that enforcement would begin the nanosecond the SRA became law. _Huh._ Xander wasn't the most politically astute person, but even he knew that laws like that didn't go into effect immediately. They were carefully instituted to allow people to come into compliance. _I mean, that was just common sense. If everyone got used to wearing seat belts, and suddenly you passed a law that said, No seat belts , it would be stupid if you started arresting people without letting everyone know about it._ Plus he was fairly sure that imprisoning someone for life merely for existing was a violation of the Constitution.

That Captain America refused to have any part of it didn't surprise Xander at all. He'd always liked that about the character. Man of principle. Stalwart and true and all that. Xander wondered what it would be like to meet the guy.

"Where are your shoes, honey?"

The question came out of nowhere. Xander had been paying so much attention to the newspaper that even with his much-enhanced senses, he'd been snuck up on. He look up before he'd really recognized what was being asked. What?

"You ain't got no shoes. Where are your shoes?" The speaker was a tall black woman in her late 20s or early 30s. She had hair extensions and a purple tube top. She was just a little too chunky to be wearing the matching miniskirt, in Xander's opinion, but at least she wasn't overdoing the eye makeup. Xander finally recognized her as one of the hookers who were monopolizing the nearby booths, sitting like he was about as far from the cops as they could.

Behind her stood a willowy, shorter girl. Blonde with long hair, maybe late teens to early 20s. The blonde was wearing Daisy Dukes and a loose cut black T-shirt with a yellow tank top under it, and heels so high they presented a hazard to navigation for passing airplanes. Both of them were staring at Xander.

He thought for a moment, then stammered, "Well, I..."

Before Xander could come up with an adequate excuse, the black woman continued. "Oh lordy... that ain't your shirt, either. Its at least three sizes too big for you and looks like it belongs to a man." The woman lifted one edge of Xander's collar quickly, then dropped it. "And you ain't got no brar on neither; you gonna need one with tits like that, girl. And your pants're too big too. Is that clothesline?" The woman's tone of voice was odd. It wasn't friendly by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time it wasn't overtly hostile. More cynical and world-worn than anything else.

Xander looked down at himself, noticing as he always did when he looked down at himself that himself was a subjective term. Sure, he looked shoddy, but for some reason this woman was describing him in a way that made him feel like a war refugee.

The black woman shook her head in pity. "Girl, I don't know what made you dress yoself like that when you got up this morning, but it just ain't working foe you. Coming over here, I thought you'd be someone new to the territory just starting the life, but you're not. You're just a kid without someplace to stay." She leaned back away from Xander for a moment, turned back to her fellow street-walkers, saying, "Tits like that, if she sticks around, Marvin's just gonna love her."

The blonde just stood, watching Xander. Xander, for his part, fidgeted nervously. "Um, Hi." the girl finally said in what sounded to Xander like the most inauthentic Valley Girl accent he'd ever heard. "We didn't mean to bother you. Its just, well, we thought you might be one of the new girls Marvin was talking about. We hadn't seen you on any of the corners, or over by the bridge, or that lot behind Zeke's Smokehouse."

Xander wasn't sure how to respond. "I'm not... uh... I don't... um. I don't want to be insulting. I'm not a hooker."

"Oh. Yeah, we got that part. Panda and Deon and Lakeisha were just talking, and Panda said something about your tits, and Deon figured that they were real because there ain't no way Marvin would have put money up front for them without you first showing that you could make money and I said that he might and Lakeisha told me I was a fucking moron. So I bet her $10 bucks they were fake, but on the way over to ask you she noticed you weren't wearing shoes and had someone else's clothes on and wanted to ask you about them instead." The girl finally took a breath. "I'm Mercedes. Like the car. What's your name?"

"I'm Alex." Xander coughed quietly. "Alexandra."

"Nice to meet you." The girl, Mercedes, stuck her hand out.

"Likewise." Xander shook her hand, still a bit puzzled. "Nice to meet you."

"Great! You going to stay at the Catholic shelter? I stay there off-and-on, when I'm not working or when I'm sick or when I really need a shower or something. I eat there sometimes too, when I'm short on money." The smile on Mercedes face never dimmed once while she was talking. When she finished, the girl took a quick breath and said, "So are they?"

The sudden shift in conversational direction stopped Xander cold. "What? Are what what?"

"You're tits, silly? Where'd you get the work done?" The girl giggled, then abruptly was coy, much too coy for what Xander would expect from an experienced hooker. Oh, don't tell me they're real! The girl's eyes got wide and were suddenly glued to Xander's chest. Xander felt a sudden urge to cover herself with her arms.

"Yes, they're real. Do you mind?"

"Oh hey, sorry! I didn't mean to creep you out of anything. I just... I dunno... you're really pretty, that's all. Anyway, I'll see you around, Alex!" With that, the girl turned around and walked back to her table. Xander heard her state, loudly and firmly, "They're real. Lakeisha, can I owe you the ten?"

Xander turned back to the counter and his chili, shaking his head at what just happened, only to find Willow the Waitress standing in front of him, an amused smile on her face. Xander gave her his patented What the Hell Was That face and she laughed.

"Yeah, the girls can be a bit of a car crash if you let them. You okay?" She seemed to be honestly interested.

xxxXXXxxx

The sun was just barely coming up when Wonder Man was shaken out of his research by the buzzing of the phone. He no longer had a lot of the same needs and reactions as a normal human being, but after sitting in silence for several hours, long after which he stopped paying attention to the clickety-clack of his own keystrokes, the loud buzz of the phone actually caused him to jump. He'd gripped the arm of his chair so hard it bent out of shape.

"Of all the..." He grabbed the phone on the third ring. He took a deep breath and said, "We're sorry, but the West Coast Avengers is no longer in service. If you'd like to leave a message, press one. If you'd like to speak to an operator, press two. Si desea continuar en espa ol, pulse tres."

"Simon, has anyone told you that your Spanish is atrocious?" It was Stark.

"Tony! How are you feeling? Did they let you out of the hospital already? How's Carol?" Wonder Man was glad to hear from the man, regardless of how pissed he was at how things had gone down. He needlessly rubbed his eyes for a moment. "What time is it in New York?"

"Still a little beat up, they want to hold me for one more day, she's still in the burn ward and I haven't been told anything else about her, and a little bit before 8:30 in the morning." Tony Stark said, all in one breath. "What's the story with the girl. You guys catch her yet, or what?"

Wonder Man cleared his throat, wondering where to begin. "Tony, yeah, about that. You remember that one time when the same girl who pretty casually put you and Ms. Marvel in the hospital knocked Sentry into orbit, then flew off so quickly it looked like she teleported?" Wonder Man tried not to get snarky, but really couldn't help it. Stark was utterly silent on the other end. "You remember when that happened?"

"She got away." It wasn't a question.

"Yes. She got away. Worse, she sort of disappeared. We figure she's somewhere in LA, but we don't really have a clue as to where. For all I know, she's sitting on the roof of SHIELD headquarters laughing at us right now. We can track her on radar, but she hasn't appeared on radar since she vanished on us." Wonder Man switched ears. "If she's as fast on the ground as she is in the air, we won't catch her on radar and she can go anywhere she chooses."

More silence. Then Stark said, slowly, "You know, that would be real a ballsy move. Have you had someone check the roof?"

"Not yet, but I'll add it to the to-do list. Listen, Tony, I've been digging into this girl's file. Did you know that at no time has anyone explained the SRA to her? Did you know that no one asked her if she even intends on complying, much less gave her a chance to do so?" Wonder Man took a deep breath. "Did you know SHIELD kept her in a prison hospital for five months without any legal standing to do so, and when she woke up, immediately went into attack dog mode? I'm seriously not comfortable with this, Tony."

More silence. "Yes, I knew, Simon. I read her file."

"And?"

"And... while I am sympathetic to her plight, I feel that we as a team must stand firm in our resolve to enforce the law of the land, and to support SHIELD in the enforcement of that law."

"Right. I'm not buying it." Wonder Man shook his head, even though he knew Tony couldn't see it. "What's with the girl? Why is she the poster child for lawbreakers suddenly? As far as we can tell, this is the first time she's ever been in trouble in her life."

"Honestly, I have no idea. Hill has it in for her, and so the girl is going down to appease the Director of SHIELD." At least Tony was sounding a little unsettled by it, not that Simon was buying that either. "Tony was a good guy, but he was firmly of the 'the needs of the many mean the individuals get ground up in the cogs' mindset. If someone convinced Tony Stark that one person being sacrificed meant a thousand got to live happy lives, that one person was screwed, not matter how innocent.

xxxXXXxxx

Xander had thanked Willow the Waitress for the chili and the paper, paid her bill, collected her change, and stood. The diner was emptying. The cops had left a couple of hours earlier, giving her no more than a cursory glance. The hookers had filtered out one by one, heading wherever they were heading. Only one or two were still left, nursing cups of coffee.

Xander stepped out into the California morning and looked up at the stars. The sky was brighter than it was last night, a consequence of the changed position of the earth, no doubt. She could see the mountain ridges and valleys on the moon, the various pieces of space-trash in orbit, and behind it all the tapestry of the cosmos. It was simply beautiful. Xander looked to the east, and despite the fact that the sun was peaking over the edge of the mountains, he could still see a field of stars if he wanted to.

This time she heard the person approach; her heartbeat was a give-away, not to mention her odor: sweat mixed with perfume mixed with slightly soiled clothing and tobacco smoke. "Hey, Alex. You headed over to the Catholic shelter?" It was Mercedes.

Xander shrugged. "That's the plan. Its a place to stay until I find a job and maybe get a place to stay of my own." He took his eyes off the sky and looked at the girl, who was once again acting coy.

"Well, I tell you what. Panda said she was getting on a bus to San Francisco this morning to see her mother and won't be back until Sunday night and gave me a key so I can feed her fish. She told me I could crash at her pad while she was gone." Mercedes was again smiling widely. "And I figure since you stayed up all night like me you probably need a place to at least get a nap in before you have to like sweep and mop some floors or wash dishes or something to get a bed at the Catholic Shelter. You seemed pretty nice while we talked and you don't look crazy or anything and you don't have any needle marks and aren't like, horrible dirty. And I kinda hate to be all by myself because, I mean, I'm not very intimidating being sort of short and all. So do you wanna?"

Xander was confused. "Do I want to what?"

"Oh! Crash at Panda's! You know, just for a couple of hours, because you look like you could use it and I know I could use the company." Again with the coy look.

"Thanks for the offer, Mercedes, but you don't even know me and you're asking me if I want to stay over?"

"Sure! I mean, you're not a psycho-killer or something, right?"

"No, not that I'm aware." Xander said truthfully. "But then, if that was true, would I admit it?"

This thought didn't even slow Mercedes down. "The way I figure it is this: you're new in town and obviously need a friend to watch your back. I'm not really old, but still need a friend to watch your back. And you're really pretty and sexy and... I dunno. You just seem trustworthy. "She took a deep breath and stood there for a second.

That caught Xander sideways. "Wait..."

"Now, just so you know, I don't do drugs or drink and I don't do weird shit with the johns and insist they go wrapped or they go home, and I try to stay out of Marvin's way so he don't get mad at me. I go to church on Sunday, and only smoke half a pack a day. Panda doesn't smoke, so I won't do it at her apartment." The girl looked at him, like a puppy who was begging for a treat. "You just seem trustworthy, so I figured I'd ask. So do you wanna? I figure that later, we can go out and find you some shoes and maybe some clothes that fit."

Xander reviewed everything Mercedes had just said, playing it back at quarter-speed. Then he shrugged. He didn't trust her as... he laughed to himself. He was about so say 'He didn't trust her as far as he could throw her', but these days that was pretty far. And that was the point. It wasn't like the girl could hurt him, and she had no intentions of hurting the girl, so why not. Crashing on someone's couch for a couple of hours sounded good.

"Yeah, sounds like a good plan. After you."

xxxXXXxxx

"Face it, Simon, you're running around in circles," Wonder Man said to himself as he grabbed his eighth cup of coffee. He sat back down in front of the computer, thinking about the mystery of this girl. He'd almost decided what he needed to do, but was hesitant to go through with it.

And then suddenly, there it was, on his computer screen: his search of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's database came back with a positive match on her picture. He had a smile on his face as he began scanning her record, but as he read the smile vanished, then turned into a frown, and then a scowl. If this was the same girl, and to Wonder Man's eyes, they were the same girl, then this was a bad, bad situation. Real bad. He picked up the phone and punched in four numbers.

It took only a moment for the Wasp to answer. Obviously his call had woken both her and Hank up, as he could hear him grumbling in the background. "If this isn't important I'm going to kill you, whoever you are. What?"

"Janet, it's Simon. I think I have a line on the girl. Full name Karen Starr Danvers, reported missing two years ago by her mother, right before her father was arrested and convicted of child sexual assault. From a small town called Midvale, Ohio, which is about as small as it sounds; the entire place only has 750 people in it. Anyway, it looks like she's an abuse case. She might not be right in her own mind, if you know what I mean."

On the other end of the phone. Janet was forcing herself to wake up as quickly as possible. "Oh Christ, let me guess. Abused girl, about 15 years old, gets regularly raped by her dad and in reaction to the stress, her mutant powers activate. She freaks out because of the rape; she freaks out because of the powers, and in the middle of this psychotic break, disappears into the wilderness...

"Looks like."

"Did she kill her dad before she vanished?"

Simon could tell what Janet was thinking. A traumatized rape victim who suddenly found herself with Hulk-level strength could do a lot of damage. He continued to read the file. "No. He's in jail. They tried to get her dad for her murder, but couldn't because they didn't have a body to base a case around. They did find, and this is a direct quote, semen traces matching her father's DNA' unquote, all over her sheets in her bedroom."

"Lovely."

"Yeah. This is horrible stuff. Speaking of her bedroom, I've got pictures here of her room from the investigation. Looks like a teenage girl's room. Lots of posters. She was into movies and TV shows apparently. Care to guess which show one of the posters is about? I'll give you three tries, but you're only going to need one."

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer?"

"Told you that you'd only need one."

"Fantastic." The sound from the other end became muffled, leading Wonder Man to think that Wasp was covering the phone with her hand while she talked to Hank. "Okay, Simon... get on the horn to Leonard Samson. I think he's still in Phoenix. If this girl is a psycho-case, we're going to need his help."

"Will do. You coming in?"

"Yeah. We'll be there in twenty minutes. Have you rousted the others?"

"Not yet. I figured I'd let you do that. See you when you get in." Wonder Man set the phone down, then leaned back to finish reading the file. It was a nauseating story. How long did a person endure this sort of horror before their mind snapped like a twig? Her situation, though, made it easy for Simon to make a decision he'd been mulling over all night. He assembled copies of everything they knew about the girl and zipped it together into one file. Then, with a couple more taps of the keys, the complete file was wining its way through the internet toward a certain person Simon hoped would be in a better position to help the girl.

And she needed help, not imprisonment, that was for sure.

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note:** If you recognize it, it belongs to Mutant Enemy, DC Comics, or Marvel Comics. Everything else is mine.


	8. A Series of Quiet Interludes

**A Series of Quiet Interludes**

xxxXXXxxx

_"It may not always be easy, or convenient, or safe for a person to defend truth and integrity and justice, but it is always the right thing to do. Always." - M. Russell Ballard_

xxxXXXxxx

"So. Um. Mercedes..." Xander began. She and her temporary new roommate had only been walking a couple of minutes, and had done so in silence. She'd caught the girl glancing at her off and on, but hadn't said anything.

"Actually my name's Louise." The girl said quietly. She looked up at Xander from under her bangs and smiled. "Louise Fulford, couldn't you just die? But... you know... when you... well... you know. Mercedes-cum-Louise shrugged. The guys expect you to be named something exotic. Nothing exotic about Louise."

"Oh." Xander nodded. "Well, Louise is nice. I like Louise. Its got the benefit of being not a car, anyway."

The girl giggled, then reached out to touch Xander's arm gently. "That's a nice way of putting it. Thank you." Xander just nodded again and smiled. "So...", she prompted.

"Hmm?"

"You said, 'So, Mercedes' but never finished the thought."

Xander was confused for a moment, then brightened. "Oh, yeah. I did, didn't I? I was asking you. Are you from LA?"

"Nope. I'm from a small town called Junction City, Kansas. Its an army town. I graduated high school and couldn't afford to get into Kansas State, and I wasn't really into the idea of snagging a soldier and being a military wife and was getting all claustrophobic. My parents thew me out after I turned 18, and my friends were sick of me staying on their couches. So I ran away to Hollywood to become a famous movie star." Louise stopped for a breath and laughed. "That might not have been the smartest idea, she said, rolling her eyes."

"And how did you start... um..." She wasn't sure how to continue. It seemed rude to dwell on Louise's profession.

"Its okay, Alex. You can say it, it's okay. I'm not proud of it, but what can I do, right?" Louise looked sad, nonetheless. "I started hooking because I ran out of money. Lost the apartment I started out in, was homeless for a while. Marvin thought he could make something out of me, bought me some clothes, and here I am."

"And you can't go home?" Xander asked.

Louise shook her head. "Not really an option. First, if Marvin thought I was running away from him, it would be bad. And, well... my folks are really religious. They don't want me around anyway, but now that I'm a..." She sputtered to a stop, looking very sorry for herself.

"Yeah." It was all Xander could think of to say. They walked in silence again, for a while. Xander stared into space, not really paying attention to where they were walking. Just walking.

"So, Alex. Do you have a boyfriend back home?" The question came out of nowhere, and for a moment she was about to ask Louise why the other girl thought she was gay, until she realized that Louise didn't think he was gay. Quite the opposite. Going by external appearances, assuming a boyfriend was a natural thought.

"Um... no boyfriend back home. Had a best friend who would have made a good one, all things considered. But he died." As always, thinking of Jesse brought a frown to her face."

It also made her realize he hadn't thought of this particular consequence of suddenly being female. She didn't feel different on the inside. Well, except when she did, but in her head she was still a guy, and still found girls attractive. She experimentally ran a few male celebrities he knew were handsome through his mind, feeling around for any unusual reactions. Harrison Ford. Rugged, handsome, no attraction. Brad Pitt. No reaction. Jared Leto... well, yeah, okay, there was a reaction. But it was _Jared Leto_. Like Rob Lowe and David Bowie, Jared Leto was so pretty that even guys wanted him.

When he tried the same though experiment about beautiful women, the reaction was different. Jennifer Lopez for example. Jennifer Lopez in that dress she wore to the Oscars. Jennifer Lopez out of the dress she wore to the Oscars. Xander's eyes widened as she realized that, being in a woman's body, her natural heterosexual tendencies meant she was effectively a lesbian. A lesbian? Yowzers!

"What was that?" Louise was looking at him oddly.

"Huh?" _Oh yeah, Xander, brilliant comeback._

"Well, I asked you if you had a boyfriend back home and you said no, then you went quiet, and then you said something but it was too quiet for me to hear."

Xander grinned at the fact that she said all that in one breath. It was so much like Willow. "I didn't realize I said it out loud. I, uh." Xander hesitated. "Well, I don't want it to bother you. Or freak you out."

"Alex, I'm a twenty year old prostitute whose invited a perfect stranger she's just met to a friend's apartment so they can both get some sleep and maybe spend the day together. If I haven't freaked out yet, why would I freak out now?"

Xander couldn t argue with that. "I said, um, I said I'm a lesbian." It was harder than she thought. As a teenage boy in the 1990s, admitting homosexuality was a difficult thing. Even if she wasn't really homosexual, the implications were...

"Well that's good. So am I."

"Wahuh?" It was all Xander could respond with.

Louise looked at Xander in confusion.

"Don't get me wrong, but you're a hooker. You sleep with men for money."

Louise nodded, an expression on her face that clearly said, _So? What the hell is your point?_

"But you're a lesbian?"

That caused Louise to laugh out loud. "Alex, I only sleep with men for money. It's... its... its a job. They go to town and I make the necessary noises and they finish and I'm out the door. I'm not looking for that special connection from a man. For money, I have sex with men. Connections I look for from women."

"But I would think..."

"Oh come on, Alex." Louise interrupted. "I've been throwing you looks and casual touches and being all coy with you since we started talking. Didn't it make you wonder why?" Louise was laughing at her, but it was the friendly jape style of laughter and not the painful cruelty type of laughter. "I mean, really... you're gorgeous and seem sweet and I figured hey, why not try and get to know you, right? At worst, maybe I'll get a nice time getting it on with beautiful woman who has tits out to there. At best... maybe I'll get a girlfriend. I figured it was worth a try."

Xander opened her mouth to say something, then closed it.

Louise noticed. "I just hope I'm not freaking you out completely. I'm not exactly the girl you can take Mom home to. And I was afraid you'd look down on me for... you know... being a whore."

"I wouldn't call you a whore. Its not like you wanted to do this, right?" Xander sighed. "I didn't ask for this situation either. I don't have a home to come back to anymore, and I'll never see my friends or even my worthless drunk parents."

Louise stopped and gave Xander a quick hug. "Didn't mean to drag the bad memories out. Forgive me?"

Xander smiled shyly at that. "Yeah, its okay. Sorry." She took a deep breath, let it out, then looked askance at Louise. "I'm sorry I missed all your clues. I'm not the most perceptive when it comes to girls. And I've never really... um..."

Louise stopped laughing. "Whoa. Never?" Xander shook her head. "So, no girlfriend and you've never..."

Xander just shook her head. "No. I've never. There was a girl I was interested in, but she saw me as a brother." The word 'brother' came out so quickly that Xander had no chance to correct it.

"Like a brother? That fits. I mean, look at you. Your muscles have muscles. I'm guessing you were captain of your school's volleyball team and were on the softball team and if they'd have taken you, you'd have been on the football team." Louise giggled. "Its okay. I like butch women. Me, I was the opposite. I was a runner-up for homecoming queen and was in the glee club and drama and had three dozen shoes." She paused. "So I take it you looked on from afar as this girl you were into went out with the prom king."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Her loss."

"Never thought of it like that." Xander was quiet, obviously thinking.

"I've freaked you out, haven't I?" Louise was obviously worried. "I didn't mean to come off like I was, you know... I just. Like I said, you seemed nice, and you're really pretty, and since you're on the streets like me I thought maybe you'd be understanding of what I do to eat, and all. And I could use a friend." She swallowed visibly. "So you're freaked out."

"Just a little." Xander held up a hand. "Its okay though. I get it, and its okay. I'm not freaking out about... you know... just that you're a stranger who walked up and am being nice to me. I seem to be meeting a bunch of them now that I'm in LA and I didn't expect it. You're not driving me away or anything. I still need a place to crash for the day, if nothing else." Xander looked at Louise again, taking in her face. "And I like you, I guess. And I could use a friend?"

They walked on in silence. Then Louise said, "Friends is a good start."

"A good start?" Xander asked.

"Yep. A girl can dream, right?"

Xander laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. "Well, yeah. I dream all the time about... um... let's pretend that the conversation hasn't gone where its gone. Let's talk about something else."

"Okay. How about where you're from?"

Xander thought quickly. "Um... Santa Barbara." While Xander had never heard of the place before he got here, that was the closest city to where Sunnydale was supposed to be. "I'm... I'm one of those California girls the Beach Boys sing about."

"That's cool." Louise nodded. "So how old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"What?" Louise stopped dead in her tracks. "Oh my God, you're_ JAIL-BAIT_. Wow... you so do not look seventeen! You look like you're at least my age."

Xander shook his head. "Nope. I'll be eighteen in January."

"January, that's cool. I'll be 23 in January."

"Oh yeah? What day's your birthday?" Xander smiled. Mine's the twelfth."

Once again, the girl stopped dead. "Now you're just fucking with me."

"What? No, I'm not... um... wait." Xander figured it out. "You're birthday's the twelfth, too?"

"Yep!' Louise dug around in her purse and pulled out a plastic card. It was a State of California ID card. Sure enough, there it was. Louise Fulford. DOB January 12, 1984. It occurred to Xander that, chronologically at least, Louise was three years younger than she was, not five years older, considering the time-jump as well.

"That's cool," she said as Louise put the card back. "I need to get one of those." _And a social security card. And a birth certificate..._

Louise's question broke Xander's revery. "You okay? You sort of spaced."

"Just thinking of all the problems I got right now."

xxxXXXxxx

As soon as he stepped through the door into the group's hidden headquarters, people were clamoring for his attention. Some had issues he needed to make a decision about. Some just needed reassurance. Some... some he wished would go away for a while. Captain America was as human as the next guy, despite his reputation for fair play and honesty.

"People, people! Let me grab a cup of coffee first, at least." That got everyone to back off for a minute.

He passed Hulkling's problem off to the Falcon, backed up Nighthawk's decision concerning his team, and tried to talk Hercules out of getting into a brawl with "that arrogant cur," meaning Rage. And then Sue Storm was in front of him, waving around one of those paper-thin computer tablets she'd brought with her when she walked out on Reed.

"Steve, I have something you need to take a look at. Our source inside Tony's team sent us something very interesting." She handed the tablet to him. "Take a look. Newly discovered mutant. Never given a chance to refuse to register before they had her tried, convicted, and sentenced."

"Wonderful." Captain America took a deep breath. "Do you think its possible that Tony could be even more blatant in his destruction of the Constitution?"

Sue chuckled at the gallows humor. "He's a smart man. I'm sure he can think of something."

"Right. Wait... Says here she's wanted for felony murder?" Cap frowned at that. "She killed someone?"

"No... if you read deeper you find out that she escaped custody after discovering they were going to send her to the Gulag for the rest of her life. During the escape, apparently someone shot her with one of those Hulk-stopper pistols and the bullet bounced."

"Ah... and a bystander caught the ricochet."

"Not the first one, no." Sue frowned.

"Not the... wait, you mean someone shot her, saw that the Hulk-stopper didn't do anything except cause a friendly fire hazard, and then tried again? He put a hand up to his forehead. And their blaming her because, hey, why not."

Captain America studied the pad for a moment longer. "Let me get to the meat of this when I can. Just off the top, what do you want to do?"

"Someone needs to reach out to this girl, Steve." Sue was obviously concerned. "She's just a kid, for one, doesn't need to be railroaded for two, and we could use her kind of firepower for three."

"Her kind of firepower?"

"Yeah. She apparently one-punched Sentry and drove Tony into the ground."

Cap stood there for a second, not sure he heard it right. "Say that again?"

"To put it bluntly, she's capable of treating Sentry like a four-year-old girl. That's what Simon says. He says she beat the crap out of him. Knocked him into orbit or some-such." She took a step closer. "Tell me we couldn't use someone like that?"

"Any idea where she is?"

"Somewhere in LA, according to the file." He could already see the wheels moving in Sue's head.

"Okay." He finished his coffee, then motioned her to follow him as he walked back to the kitchenette they'd set up in a side room. "Who do we have in Los Angeles other than Simon? And do we have anyone who can get in and out without Tony or Maria Hill noticing?"

Sue became pensive. "I was thinking we could send Jessica. She's from San Francisco, and that's the closest we can get to someone who knows LA except Hercules, and I don't want to send Hercules. Not if we can help it. And Monica. I can't think of how Tony or Hill would stop Monica from going wherever the heck she wanted to." She took a deep breath. "And I want to go."

"You? Sue, you're famous. You'd stick out like a sore thumb." Captain America washed out his coffee cup, then set it out to dry. "This sort of thing needs subtlety."

"Do you honestly think they'd try snatching someone as big a name as I am from the streets, Steve?" Sue almost laughed at the thought. "They aren't going full-on Nazi yet." Cap scowled at the reference and she stopped, realizing what she said. "Oh Steve, sorry... I just... I want to go because the girl's an Omega. And so am I. I want to go just in case something goes wrong and we have to defend ourselves against her."

He thought about it for a bit, then nodded. "You should take Tandy and Tyrone as well. They'll give you greater firepower, and they know the streets. Kid like that, nowhere else to go, they might be able to give you some insight on where she'll be hiding."

"Great. And thanks, Steve. I need to get out and do something. I can't just sit here and hide." Sue shrugged. You know how it is.

"I do indeed. Okay. Assemble your team."

xxxXXXxxx

"So..." Spider-Man flipped through the briefing folder Wonder Man had printed up for the team. "Danvers? Is she any relation to..."

"You know," Wonder Man interrupted. "I asked myself that question as well. Turns out there's close to half a quarter million people in this country with the surname 'Danvers', according to 'Ancestry' magazine. So I had SHIELD run background on the family. As far as they can tell, there's no connection, at least back to the last four generations. Farther back, who knows."

Spider-Man held his hands up in an 'I Surrender' gesture.

"Well, this certainly changes things. Instead of a scared girl with the power of a god, we have a scared insane girl with the power of a god." Black Widow's voice was filled with venom and sarcasm. She turned to Yellowjacket, who was still reading the file. "Tell me again how you think we need to 'take this bitch down', Hank?"

Yellowjacket fumed for a moment. "How the hell was I supposed to know that she was some sort of victim?"

"Perhaps by listening to her when she spoke?" The Widow met his gaze unflinchingly. It was Yellowjacket who turned away. "She has constantly maintained that she wasn't here to hurt anyone and just wanted to be left alone." A pause. "What... did most of you just chalk that up to the usual supervillain 'I want to get away' chatter?"

"Can I plead the fifth on that one?" Spider-Man asked. "Tony said, 'Bad Guy' and I just went along with it."

"And yet you keep insisting that you're one of the smarter ones in the room and that we should treat you more seriously. Perhaps if Mister Smart and Educated would take the time to actually check the facts once in a while..." Wonder Man's comments just sort of hung there in the air for a moment. "There is way too much self-righteousness going on in here." He stood and walked out; had he been able to slam the door, he would have.

"Okay, this sort of bickering isn't getting us anywhere. I sent a copy of all of this to Tony and he said he's going to discuss it with Hill and get her to back down." Wasp sat down at the head of the table, sipping on coffee. "Have there been any sightings of her?"

"This... this changes nothing." Sentry proclaimed. He was using that overly-dramatic 'heroic' voice he sometimes used. Spider-Man had once joked that it made him sound like he was doing a bad Adam West impression, back when West was playing the Shadow in the 60s. "This girl is darkness incarnate, and I will destroy her."

"Uh... right." Spider-Man leaned forward. "And you know she's darkness incarnate because..." He waved his hand in a keep going motion.

"How else could she defeat me?" Sentry's tone told everyone else that he thought it was self-evident.

"She's an Omega, for crying out loud!" Spider-Man laughed at Sentry's naivete. "Seriously, have you ever gone up against an Omega before? Its not like busting stick-up artists at the local 7-11!"

"And I suppose you have faced one before?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact. I did." Spider-Man was leaning forward in his seat, clearly angry at Sentry's arrogance. "Firelord. Every hear of him?"

Sentry shook his head.

"Used to be a herald of Galactus. I assume you've heard of _them_?"

"You fought one of the heralds of Galactus?" Sentry was clearly skeptical. "How did you survive?"

"Two things: sheer dumb luck on my part, and the fact that his heart really wasn't in the fight. Otherwise, I'd have been a spider-shaped charcoal briquette. Heck, Firelord destroyed four square blocks in Queens before our fight had made it past the five minute mark. He could have had me the moment he tried hard." Everyone else at the table was silent. Most of them had heard of Spider-Man's fight with Firelord. Some had even seen the aftermath.

"So what is your point. That this girl could 'have us' whenever she wants?" Sentry sneered.

"Well, yeah, that's one of my points. The other is that if you go into a fight with her thinking you're going to just hand her own ass to her on a platter, you're going to get knocked into the ocean again." Spider-Man leaned back in his chair, clearly finished with the lecture. "And given that, oh hey, its not her fault and we've been chasing the wrong girl, apparently, maybe that should happen again. Okay?" With that Spider-Man stood. "Simon's right. I'm heading out for some fresh air, too. Call me when we've all come to our senses." And like Wonder Man, he too was gone.

There was a long period of uncomfortable silence, which continued until Black Widow broke it. "It is a good thing, I suppose, that Alexandra Harris does not want to 'take us'." She turned toward Yellowjacket, who looked as if he wanted to say something. "And if you say anything about what happened with Iron Man and Ms. Marvel, you will regret it. They started that fight, not her." She stood and stretched." I'm finding my continued association with this effort is distasteful. If you need me for an actual crisis, call me. Otherwise, I'm heading back to New York."

With that, yet a third member of the Avengers team left.

"So, moving on." Wasp said, taking another sip of her coffee and trying to not make too much of the fact that half her team vanished. "We were talking about sightings?"

"Plenty." Yellowjacket picked up a report and waved it in emphasis. "Surveillance scanned traffic camera recordings between nine pm and midnight, and spotted eight different possible matches. We've eliminated all but two of them. Seems there are a lot of tall, muscular blondes in Los Angeles." He picked up the remote and pointed it toward the monitor. "The two we haven't eliminated are only seen from behind, and disappear from the cameras as they move. Given that coverage in Los Angeles is only 38%, this isn't actually a surprise."

Yellowjacket tossed the remote back to the table. "She hasn't shown up on anyone's radar, so she hasn't been flying around. Given her invulnerability, she wouldn't be bothered by the environment. Its possible she found a corner of a rooftop or a room in an empty building and just sacked out. Hell, for all we know, she hopped the fence and has been wandering around the backstage area at Disneyland all night."

"Okay... I guess we wait until she pops up on the grid." Wasp concluded. "We can't keep our attention on this one girl any longer. There are other fires that need putting out."

"Yes... including what to do about Spider-Man, Wonder Man, and Black Widow." Yellowjacket muttered.

"What was that, Hank?"

"Those three... the three that walked out. What are we going to do about them?"

Wasp looked at him, confused. "What do you suggest we do about them? They're people. They disagree with the way this case is shaping up, and I can't say I blame them."

"They'd better step up when it comes time to arrest this girl. Otherwise, we have no hope of succeeding." He looked over at Sentry, the only other Avenger left. "Not with just the three of us."

"What?" Wasp was shocked. "You think Simon and Peter and Natasha are going to defect, suddenly? Start fighting for Cap?"

Yellowjacket looked mulish, then said. "Wouldn't put it past them."

The three of them sat in silence until Yellowjacket asked, "Has anyone heard from Ares lately?"

xxxXXXxxx

Louise opened the door onto a room-and-a-half apartment. It was on the second floor of a run down complex that Xander guessed started out life as a Holiday Inn or something some time around the Kennedy administration. The apartment had a large single room, with a kitchenette and a bathroom and a closet, and that was it. The living room doubled as the bedroom. A queen-sized bed dominated the room, which also contained a nightstand, a lamp, a television, a clock radio and a fish tank, and that was it.

Xander followed Louise in. The blonde girl gestured around, as if giving a tour. "Well, this is it. Panda likes to keep it simple. The bathroom is over there. Kitchen's there." She put her purse down on the bed, then pulled her t-shirt off. That joined the purse on the bed. "Make yourself comfortable. I need to get a shower."

Xander looked around at the room for a moment. "So... just the one bed?"

Louise stopped at the bathroom door and looked at Xander with a smile. "I promise, I won't try to jump you, okay? We can share the bed. It's cool." She started into the bathroom, then stopped again. "If you want, you can share the shower with me. Save on water and all." The coy smile was back. Xander met her eyes with a very nervous smile. Louise smirked, then pulled her tank top over hear head and tossed it onto the bed as well.

Xander became very conscious of the fact that Louise wasn't wearing anything under the tank top, a reaction that the other girl couldn't help but notice. It was a clear invitation. Xander was as still as a statue, not even breathing. Louise laughed. "It's okay, Alex. You don't have to join me if you don't want to. and disappeared into the bathroom."

Xander let out the breath she'd been holding in a gush forceful enough to move the curtains on the room's front window. She turned around, studying the room once more, before leaning over to take a look at the fish in the tank. There was a single yellow angelfish gliding around what looked like a plastic reproduction of the Roman Colosseum, and trios of smaller fish doing the same. Silver with black stripes, red with long black fins. One trio of fish were pink, and he could see their internal organs. And there was a large, ugly algae eater in one corner.

Her examination of the fish tank completed, Xander took a moment to gaze out of the corner of the curtain at the courtyard below. He could see several young men sitting around, looking for all the world like a stereotypical Hispanic gang. Every once in a while, an outsider would enter the courtyard, talk to one of the young men, and then be escorted to a third. A short discussion would ensue, followed by handshakes.

It took a moment for Xander to realize she was watching drug deals going down, right in front of the apartment he was in. She shook her head. Some life. But who was he to complain. It was better than sacking out on a roof.

She sat on the bed, listening as the sound of flowing water started from the bathroom. Louise had left the door open, so occasionally steam clouds would flow out of it into the relatively cooler air of the apartment. Xander could hear the girl singing, just above the sound of the shower.

She sat there.

She sat there.

She sat there.

Xander couldn't believe that she was actually thinking about this. She didn't know Louise. She didn't know anything about Louise. Louise was a complete stranger. Louise was a hooker, for fuck's sake.

She sat there.

She sat there.

She sat there.

She couldn't believe she was actually thinking about this.

She sat there.

She sat there.

She sat there.

The angelfish changed direction, reversing its course around the miniature landmark.

She sat there.

She sat there.

She sat there.

Not really knowing what else to do, Xander looked toward the bathroom. The wall faded away, then the shower curtain. Louise was under the water, rubbing a handful of liquid soap all over... Xander looked back to the fish tank.

She sat there.

She sat there.

She sat there.

With a nervous sigh, Xander stood up and pulled her shirt over her head. Her hands were shaking as she untied the knotted clothes line. Once it was undone, her jeans became so loose on her hips that they naturally fell to the floor.

As she entered the bathroom, she couldn't help but notice the difference in feeling she got from the shower's steam and the cold air put out by the window-mounted air conditioner.

Xander pulled the shower curtain back and stepped in. Louise gasped at the cold air, but was smiling. The other girl looked Xander up and down, twice, and the smile became even wider. Xander just stood there, feeling the hot spray of water against her knees, and utterly unsure about what she should be doing. Lacking anything else, Xander found himself staring at Louise, taking the other girl in.

Louise was smaller than Xander, and shorter, but not to the same extent Buffy had been smaller than Xander had been back when he was a guy. Long blonde hair that came from a bottle; the other girl's roots were auburn. She had a rounded face that reminded him of Drew Barrymore a little. The skin on her shoulders had freckles.

"You look so nervous. Don't be nervous, Alex." Louise moved carefully around her, pushing Xander toward the shower's spray. "This is your first time in a shower with another girl?"

Xander just nodded. She wasn't sure she could talk.

"Well, let me tell you from experience, the trick in a shower this small is to help the other person clean themselves." Louise was laughing again, but it was the same kind laughter. "There's not really enough room for anything more than that."

Xander found her voice, but it was hesitant. She found that she was afraid of saying something stupid. "You wash my back, I wash yours?"

"You got it. Here." Louise picked up a bottle of liquid soap with a pump with one hand, while grabbing Xander's arm with the other. The girl squirted soap into Xander's palm, and then a little more into her own hand. "Go ahead. Wash up."

Xander stepped under the water, closing her eyes and letting it run down her chest and back for a moment. Then she stepped back just enough for her head to be out of the way and began applying the liquid soap to her hair, shampoo-like. Keeping her eyes closed, Xander pushed the suds down onto her face and neck, and onto her shoulders.

The feeling of Louise's hands on her back caused Xander to jump, just a bit, and she almost lost her balance. It was a surprise reaction. The actual sensation was quite enjoyable. It was unique. Something Xander had never felt before, but had dreamed about. Turned out reality was better than he expected. Louise was making circles on her shoulders, and then down her spine, and then further down onto the soft roundness of her bottom.

Xander stepped forward to rinse. Again, the water poured down her back and chest, washing away the soap suds. When the soap was clear, Xander turned around and leaned his head back so that the water struck his hair and flowed through it.

"You should see how impressive you look when you do that, Alex."

Xander straightened and he opened his eyes at last. Louise was smiling, apparently enjoying herself. "What do you mean, impressive." She thought about what she'd done, then realized. By arching her head back like that, Xander had naturally thrust her bosom forward. "Oh. Heh. I guess."

"'I guess', she says. 'Oh,' she says." Louise took a half-step forward, bringing her into Xander's personal space. The other girl brought up one of her hands and grasped Xander's right breast, squeezing just slightly as her palm pressed from below, passing over Xander's nipple and up onto her shoulder. Louise stopped suddenly and giggled. "Holy shit, those really are real!" The girl brought both hands to Xander's chest, caressing both sides equally. Xander found that, as enjoyable as having his back soaped up had been, this was better somehow.

"I told you they were."

"Yeah, I guess you did." The girl moved even closer and leaned her head up, moving her mouth into contact with his. It was his first real kiss from a girl, outside of those pecks on the cheek Willow used to give him.

And it felt really, really good too.

xxxXXXxxx

There were very few people on the planet who could see Monica Rambeau, when she was moving this quickly. Rambeau, known better to the world at large as the Avenger called Photon, had the power to assume the form of any type of radiation found on the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves at the low end to gamma rays at the high end. Most commonly, when she needed to cross really long distances in a really short amount of time, she'd assume the form of a beam of visible light. But not today. Today, she was being cautious.

In the form of a packet of radio waves, she landed on the roof of the US Bank Tower. Not only did it have the benefit of being the tallest building in Los Angeles (and indeed, was the tallest building not just in all of California but the tallest building west of the Mississippi River), but landing here amused her. This was the building the aliens destroyed in that silly Will Smith movie. The one where Jeff Goldblum used a Windows virus to destroy the mother ship.

She took a good long look at Los Angeles. Somewhere in the sea of people and buildings was the girl. They had to make contact with her, convince her they were on her side, and convince her to come with them, all without Stark's team noticing they were even there.

Tall order.

Photon took a moment to scan the city's airwaves. The usual assortment of television signals and radio signals were interspersed with radar signals from the city's airports, plus more signals from the various rectennas on buildings and in the hills surrounding the city. But then she found something that she smirked at.

There was a regular deep radar pulse sweeping the city from two different locations. One was out to see, and one was in the hills overlooking it. The frequency felt familiar, and she guessed it was something SHIELD had set up.

She'd worry about those signals later.

Rambeau immediately oriented herself in the proper direction and said, _Photon to Captain America. I'm in the door._ There wasn't anyone around her, but had there been, it would have looked like she was just talking into the air. She wasn't. _I say again, I am in the door. Let Sue know I'll meet her at location alpha. Photon out._

She took one more look at the vista that Los Angeles presented, then vanished into the air. A blurred image of her form was visible for just a moment, tinged blue, and then she was gone from sight.

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note:** If you recognize it, it belongs to either Mutant Enemy, DC Comics, or Marvel Comics. If you don't recognize it, its mine.


	9. 246, Code Purple

**246, Code Purple**

xxxXXXxxx

_He fought for a better world because he believed that a better world could and would be made. He had never held any illusions that he would change the world, of course, or even a substantial portion of it. But he always felt strong that fighting to better just his own little pocket of the world was a worthwhile cause. - R.A. Salvatore, The Thousand Orcs_

xxxXXXxxx

She wasn't aware of it, but it was the loud voices that woke Alexandra Harris. She came to groggily, lifting her head from the pillow. It took her a moment to remember where she was, who she was with, and what was going on.

Louise was on her left side, cradled in Xander's arms. When Xander moved, Louise snorted and wriggled backward, further into the larger woman's warmth, but did not wake. This made Xander smile for multiple reasons. Louise was cool. She was pretty. She liked Xander. And they had sex.

It wasn't sex like she always figured it would be, but hey... sex! It happened. She'd passed the line beyond which she could say I am a man . Or rather she could, were she not trapped in the body of a female superhero. If she were still a he, he could say that. It didn't matter. The point was, he was no longer qualified to hunt for unicorns.

It had happened amazingly fast. Xander wasn't sure, but she somehow got the idea that, in standard relationships, one did not go from having an off-hand conversation to having a deeper conversation to jumping in the shower together. Or maybe it was more common than she thought. What the hell did she know? A couple of hours ago, she was still a virgin. Did she like Louise? Sure; what was not to like? The girl was sweet and charming. Did she want to get to know Louise better? Yeah, absolutely; the number of people who she could call a friend in this world was empty, unless he counted Louise, and given that Xander could still taste Louise on his lips, he figured figured he probably should. Did he want to get involved with Louise on a serious basis? Like serious a we're-a-couple basis?

She didn't know. But for now she was willing to let the matter lie and see what came up.

There. A different sound. Xander lifted his head again. She heard a stacatto popping. Shouting. Angry voices, and heavy footsteps running past the apartment door.

"Alex?" Louise's voice was slurred, and the girl's eyes were only barely open. "Whagoenon?"

Xander sat up carefully, not trying to jostle Louise too badly. "Shh... let me listen.

Louise blinked several times before sitting up herself. She was staring at Xander with an utterly befuddled 'why did I just wake up' look. "Alex?"

But Xander was listening. The apartment to their left. Four men on the balcony, three men in the apartment, and a lot of angry muttering. Slamming sounds, like someone trying to break down a door. A metal on metal sound that Xander suddenly realized he recognized from a lifetime of watching action movies and crime thrillers. In one swift move Xander picked Louise up, moved off the bed, and crouched, covering the other girl's body as much as she could with her own. There came an explosion of sound from the next apartment as multiple firearms went off.

Louise completely lost it.

"ALEX! OH GOD, ALEX! THEY'RE SHOOTING! THEY'RE SHOOTING! WE'RE GOING TO GET KILLED!"

She struggled in Alex's grip, her first instinct obviously to run to anywhere away from the gunplay.

"Shhh... shhhh... I got you! I got you! Just hold on!" Xander just held her, as gently as she could, and kept her from moving. From the next apartment over, Xander could hear bullets flying in all directions and striking human flesh, wood, metal, and worst of all, the cinderblocks the walls of the shitty, cheaply made apartments were made of. At least twice, Xander felt bullets that had blown straight through the wall hit her in the back. A third bullet penetrated and the fish tank exploded all over the carpet.

Finally, there was no more gunfire. Just Louise screaming, and screams coming from the apartments around them.

"Louise, are you hurt?" The other girl was too panicked to comprehend. Xander knew he'd regret it, but he had learned a trick from Buffy that she said would get someone's attention, no matter how much shock they were in, or how asleep they were. Xander carefully moved her mouth to the side of Louise's head, and bit down on her earlobe. Just hard enough for it to really hurt, being careful to not bite through the thing.

"WE'RE GOING TO DIE! WE'RE GO OW SHIT!" Louise slapped a hand up to her injured earlobe. "Fuck, Alex... you bit me? She rubbed her earlobe. Why did you bite me?"

"Sorry, I had to get your attention. I think they finished shooting. Go into the bathroom and don't come out until I tell you. Stay down, as low as you can. I'll be right back." She lifted Louise, carried her to the bathroom, and gently put her down on the floor. "Promise me. Just stay there, and stay low. I'll be back in a minute."

Xander could still her someone talking next door, and from the sounds of it at least some people were shot in the other apartments. But no sirens. At least not yet. Quickly, she pulled her oversized shirt over her head. Double-checking to make sure Louise was huddling on the bathroom floor, she stepped outside.

Just outside the door of the apartment next door was a huge black man dressed in half a sweat suit and a T-shirt. He carried one of those cool shotguns you saw on the police action shows, the kind with the pistol grip. When Xander stepped out of Panda's apartment, the man had turned to her. As Xander approached, he looked her up and down, then lowered the shotgun from his shoulder. "I heard a ho lived aroun' here. Too..."

It had been his intention to finish the story by saying "Too bad you stepped out," then shoot the nosy bitch. He never had the chance. Xander grabbed the shotgun out of his hands so quickly and forcefully that his right-hand trigger finger came along with it. As the man howled in pain, she casually crumpled the barrel, then snapped the weapon in half. She completed her step forward by reaching up to his chest and thumping it like she might a watermelon she was checking for ripeness. It wasn't anywhere near as hard as she could have made it, but it was hard enough. Three of his ribs broke and the air was knocked out of his lungs forcefully. The big man, who somewhere in his head couldn't believe a girl was doing this to him, collapsed like a wet noodle.

Two and three-quarters seconds had elapsed since Xander stepped out of Panda's door.

Xander stepped through the open door of the apartment the big man had been guarding and stopped. The place was a bloodbath. There was blood on the carpets (where one man was lying face down, and another man would have been, had he retained his head), blood on the walls, blood on the bed (where a nearly nude woman was laying in a pool of her own blood, eyes open and staring at the sky), blood on the television, which not only made it through the gunfire unharmed, but was still playing the afternoon news)... and of course, blood on the gunmen.

There were three of them. One carried an impressive looking assault rifle, one a shotgun, and the other a nickel-plated automatic pistol. While two of them were kicking the apartment apart, tipping out drawers and shoving their arms into things, the third was shoving stacks of cash and a bunch of little plastic envelopes filled with powder into a duffel bag.

Pistols was saying, "I don't think this is all of it" when he noticed Xander enter. They stared at each other for just a moment, before Pistol's eyes got real wide. "What the _fuck_?" The gun rose until it was pointed at Xander's face. "What the fuck did you do to Bruno?" The other two men stopped what they were doing and pointed their guns at the new arrival as well. "Bruno? _Bruno!_" There was no answer from the man outside.

"Bruno's taking a vacation." She could still hear Louise crying back in Panda's apartment, and in the opposite apartment someone was babbling in Spanish into a phone. Xander could barely hear the replies, but she knew the cops would be hear soon.

It didn't matter. They'd put his friend in danger, and that could not be tolerated. _This_ was a lesson he'd learned at Buffy's side.

"You gonna get a vacation too, bitch!" The man Xander had labeled Pistols fired and without flinching she reached up and plucked the bullet out of the air. Pistols fired twice more, and again Xander grabbed the bullets as they were approaching.

Xander took a step forward and grabbed the pistol with one hand and crunched it into scrap and tossed Pistols out the door. He impacted the railing and tipped over into the parking lot. Assasult Rifle tried to fire, but the weapon did nothing but click as he'd forgotten to reload. For his trouble he got fingers through both of his deltoids. Shotgun tried to get creative, and hit Xander in the back of the head with his shotgun, and in return Xander shoved him into the cinderblock wall so hard he stuck.

Xander looked at the dead bodies and the gunmen and the dead bodies and the gunmen. Then she looked at the bag. And the cash in the bag. And the little plastic bags filled with what were no doubt a highly controlled and illegal substance.. She grabbed the bag and fished out all the little plastic bags; the cash stayed in the bag, the drugs ended up in a frying pan she'd found in the kitchenette. With a glance, the little plastic bags full of drugs were vapor.

She rushed back to Panda's apartment and knocked twice on the bathroom door. "Louise, its me. Come on, we have to get out of here. Now." Louise opened the door, still obviously terrified, and all but jumped into Xander's arms, sobbing.

" I know. I know. But we have to go, and we have to go before the cops get here. Grab your purse and throw your shorts and a shirt on. Quick, honey. We have to be gone yesterday."

Louise followed directions robotically. She was almost dressed when she noticed the bag. "Alex?"

"I'll get all splainy when we're safe. Right now we're not safe and if we don't get out of here before the cops call all this in, we are not going to be safe. Okay? Don't bother with your shoes. Let's just go."

Louise nodded, and they ran out the door. The girl stopped and stared at the carnage, including the big man with the broken shotgun, and the man crumpled in front of the downstairs apartment. Questions lit in her eyes, but all Xander said was, "Louise, I'll tell you later."

The pair reached the alley beside the apartment building, and Xander stopped. She looked up and down the alley before speaking again. "Louise, honey, I need to show you a secret. I didn't want to spring it on you like this, but I need to because if the cops get here before we're history, we really are going to be history, okay?"

"I don't underst-"

"I know you don't. But you have to trust me for just a little bit, and then I'll explain everything, okay?" She leaned in and, very gently, placed a kiss on the other girl's lips. "I am not going to let anything happen to you. You're my friend, and I protect my friends. Okay?"

Louise nodded, still obviously terrified by the attack. But it was good enough for Xander.

Xander lifted Louise easily into her arms, holding the smaller girl to her chest like a child. She very gently said, "Louise, honey, when I count to three take a deep, deep breath and hold it, okay?" Louise's eyes were wide with fright, but she nodded. "Okay... one... two... three... breath... hold!"

Alexandra Harris exploded into the sky.

At first, Louise's eyes bugged out to the point that Xander thought they'd explode from her face, but after a while she seemed to calm down. Never lost the 'holy shit what's going on' face, but at least she wasn't obviously terror stricken.

They were in the air for only a few seconds. Xander landed in an alley on the far side of the city, near the beach. She carefully put Louise down, then stepped back, afraid of what the girl was going to do. The other girl sank to her knees, then sat down on the ground. She started taking deep, almost sobbing breaths but her eyes never moved from Xander's. Xander was content to let Louise do what she needed to get the stress out, hoping that they hadn't finally crossed some imaginary line past which her new friend could not go.

Louise's breathing finally slowed, and the girl stood up very carefully. She was motionless for a moment before she began to pace in a wide oval, flapping her arms up and down in a way that was very reminiscent of a pigeon. On the fifth circuit, she stopped in front of Xander. Just stopped, and looked up at the taller woman. Then she started circling again. At the ninth go-round she stopped again and opened her mouth. Then she shut it again and just started circling once more.

After about fifteen times around, she stopped again. Very carefully, almost as if she was afraid of what Xander would do, Louise reached a hand out to Xander's shoulder and squeezed it very gently. "You..." Louise croaked. She coughed, then spoke again. "You can fly. That was you, flying. You flew. You picked me up and flew. We flew. That was flying, right?"

"Yeah, that was flying." Xander nodded.

"Right." Louise turned away quickly, then turned back to Xander. "Are you like a mutant or something?"

"Or something." Xander's heart was growing heavy. He'd just made a friend. He liked this girl. And the sex had been fun. He'd hate to lose her because of this. "I didn't want..."

"Yeah, I get it. You didn't want me to freak out. I get it." Again, Louise turned away for a moment, then turned back. "When... if... what would..." She turned away and was silent, then turned back. "Alex... I'm going out that way. Can you give me a minute?"

"Sure, Louise. Take all the time you need." Xander watched the girl walk away, down the alley and onto the steet, quite sure that she'd never see the other girl again.

xxxXXXxxx

At a monitoring station in SHIELD headquarters, Agent Brody Leobe stretched. His job, at least for the day, was to stare at one particular radar screen, monitoring a trio of GSR broadcasters overlooking the city. He hadn't been told why he was to watch the screens, but he'd been told that if anything popped up on it, he was to phone his control agent immediately. He'd been told it was a matter of national and international security.

No one warned him this job would be so boring he would be constantly fighting sleep. He knew better to fall asleep, because Maria Hill herself would skin him alive and pin his hide to her wall if he did. So he stretched. He stood and jumped up and down in place. He did deep knee bends. All to stay awake.

And this is how he missed the blip on his radar. It was only there for a few seconds, but had he been watching the screen instead of doing jumping jacks, he might have seen it.

xxxXXXxxx

Xander had decided to wait for half an hour before taking off. _If Louise hadn't come back in half an hour_, she thought,_ then it was definite that she was gone._ So Xander sat down on the stoop of one of the back doorways leading in the alley and waited. She'd never been able to stay in one place for half an hour before without fidgeting and pacing, and doing stupid, silly shit to break the monotony, but she'd wait for her, because Louise was her friend. Her only friend in this world.

It occurred to her that she was being pathetic. She hadn't even known Louise that long. Didn't matter, though. With everything she'd been through since coming to this world, she'd grab hold of any life preserver she could find.

"You really look pathetic down there."

Xander's eyes snapped open. Louise stood over him, smiling. Only four or five minutes had passed.

"Okay, I need to get this out, so don't interrupt, okay?" Louise's mouth tightened. Obviously this was Resolve Face for her. When Xander nodded, she went on. "I crossed the street and sat down on a park bench and thought about things and here's what I decided: you're the first non-hooker I've met who didn't immediately look at me like I was trash because I sleep with men for money. You treated me decent. And when that shitstorm just happened with the gunfire, you protected me. That tells me you're a good person."

Xander started to reply, but Louise shushed her. "No, don't talk yet. Now... I've never met a mutant, but I've heard all kinds of horror stories about them burning down buildings and melting people's faces and killing and replacing congressmen and such. But I've never met one, so I don't know if its all true. What I do know is you are gorgeous and sexy and you make me feel good and you protected me, and then helped me get away before the cops got there. So if you still want to be my friend, I still want you to be my friend. Okay?"

"Uh, yeah! Great! I do! Want to be your friend, I mean." Xander chuckled as she stood up. "I... um... I was really going to tell you, but I was sort of afraid that -"

"Yeah, you said that, silly." Louise got close to Xander and crawled up her body like she was climbing a tree. With her legs wrapped around Xander's waist and her arms around Xander's neck, they were finally face to face. "So... are there any other deep, dark secrets I need to know about before I kiss you?"

"Well... I should probably tell you about everything else I can do."

"Okay... but we can do that later. That's part of the Alex is a mutant thing. You're not, like, a CIA assassin or the runaway daughter of President Bush or a member of al-Queda are you?"

Xander had no idea what an al kayda was, so she shook her head. "Nope. Not a CIA assassin."

"Good." And with that, Louise kissed Xander, lightly and on the lips. "So, I was thinking," Louise said after the kiss. "Now that we've gone through all the trouble of learning each other's home town, and finding out you're a mutant and had sex and everything, maybe we should try going out on a date. I'm thinking a movie, maybe? Or mini-golf. I love mini-golf. Or maybe we could just go down to the beach one day and lay in the sun."

"Sure, sounds good. I'm all over the sun wosrhip!" Xander grinned widely and completely for the first time since she'd appeared. "And I kill at mini-golf."

The smaller girl released her hold on Xander's waste and shoulders and stepped down. Louise took a deep breath, as her expression became much more serious.

"Okay, that's a look," Xander said. "That's a definite something's wrong look."

"Well, yeah. We were planning on staying at Panda's all weekend, remember? And now we don't have any place to go. And we should call and let her know that her place got shot up, right? So she doesn't think its my fault."

"That would be the nice thing to do."

"I know, right? And damn it," she looked herself up and down, then did the same to Xander. "We're wearing the same clothes from yesterday. I was planning on borrowing a shirt from Panda for the weekend, maybe washing out my shorts in her sink. But that's out the window, what with cops crawling all over the complex. Do you think the cops are going to be after us?"

"Ordinarily, I'd say no. But there's this." Xander walked to where she'd dropped the bag during her freak-out. "They're probably going to be interested in what happened to this." She picked it up and slung it over her shoulder. Louise was looking at it like it was a particularly deadly-looking snake.

"Should I ask what's in there?"

"Money. And maybe one or two little plastic bags of naughty pharmaceuticals." Xander shrugged. "I tried to destroy all the drugs, but I might have missed some."

"Wait... you stole drug money from a gang!? Oh, God!" Louise began to panic again. "Alex, what were you... Why? Why, for Christ's sake? They're going to kill us!"

"The money was sitting there, and I have none of it. It was an impulse." Xander explained. "You don't exactly look like you're swimming in it either. I figured, since we were going to have to get gone anyway, since we were going to be on the run from the cops anyway, we might as well make use of it. Besides, what are the gangs going to do? Complain to the cops?"

Louise was shaking her head. "No, but they might just put a bullet in your head! Alex, that was a really stupid move!"

"Yeah, it probably was. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. And I can keep you safe from a street gang, Louise. They can't hurt me. Those guys back at the apartment tried, and look where it got them?"

"Did you kill them?"

"I don't think so." Xander was firm. "Not my plan. My plan was to stop them from hurting anyone else and to punish them for endangering my friend." He stared into her eyes. "That's you, by the way."

Louise nodded, biting her lip. It was clear that she was still frightened. "What do we do now?"

Xander thought about it for a moment. "Well, I think we should figure out just what's in this bag, then follow the original plan. Get some clothes. Get some shoes. Maybe get some food. Then figure out where we go next, okay?" She guided her friend to the mouth of the alley and took a quick look around. A row of shops on one side, a big road, and a beach. "Okay... the sign over there says this is Ocean Avenue. You have any idea where that is?"

"Ocean Avenue? Yeah... that's in Santa Monica someplace. We're in Santa Monica."

"Okay, Santa Monica. That's a start. Let's find a quiet place and check out the bag. Okay?" Louise still looked stressed, but at least she nodded. It stopped Xander in his tracks for a moment. "Louise... if you need to go, I'll understand. I'll hate it, but I'll understand. You're the only friend I got, but I'm not selfish enough to keep you around if you don't want to be."

Louise kept walking. "Alex, even if I didn't, I have nowhere else to go. Panda knew I was in her apartment. Seeing as it is her apartment, someone is going to ask her about it, and they're likely not going to be nice about asking." The girl shuddered for a moment. "And Panda's gonna give me up, and they're going to come looking for me. Hell, Marvin's gonna come looking for me. So the best thing for me is to either go to the cops, which I don't want to do, or else start running."

She looked at Xander. "I like you, Alex. No one's looked out for me like this since my folks kicked me out. And I think we got potential, you know? But I'm scared. So just let me be scared for a while, okay?"

"Yeah, I can do that."

"Thanks. Let's head over here. There's some picnic tables under some trees we can sit under." Louise led Xander across the street and into a pleasant grassy area. There were kids playing. People playing chess and cards and just laying out under the sun. It was nice.

xxxXXXxxx

Photon was nowhere near as inattentive as SHIELD agent Brody Loebe. When Xander had taken flight earlier, she had been talking to the Invisible Woman. "You should see this set-up, Sue." Again, any outsider would think she was talking into the air. Being able to assume the form of electromagnetic radiation meant you were your own cell phone.

She stepped over the unconscious SHIELD agent to get a better look at the massive ground surveillance deep radar pulse emitters SHIELD had set up to catch the girl. "From what I can tell they set up three of these stations for triangulation. I wonder if anyone told these agents that continued use of this equipment can given them cancer?"

On the other end of the call, Sue Richards laughed. "Given their current leadership, I wouldn't put it past SHIELD to forget such inconvenient trivia." There was a moment of amused silence, then Sue's voice again. "Jessica and the kids should be in LA by now. Once they get set up in a safe location, they're going to be contacting you. I'm going to be landing in about forty-five. We'll meet at the safe house and figure out the next step in the plan."

"You got it. I'm going to go see what I can see at the other radar emplacements."

Photon was about to go airborne when she felt a change in the refraction of the radar pulse. For just a few seconds, the signal was coming back faster than it had been normally, meaning there was something out there to reflect it back to the receiver. She examined the return from one angle, and then the other, and then she moved like only a beam of light could move. The trace was in motion, and was moving quickly, though compared to how fast Photon was moving, the contact might as well have been standing still. The Avenger settled in behind the trace and followed along as a massively build blonde woman carried another from one side of the city.

The target's entire flight lasted perhaps eight seconds to go from Vermont Vista to Santa Monica, with the smaller girl curled into a tight ball against her chest. Monica landed on a nearby rooftop as the flying woman set down in an alley; close enough to keep tabs, not close enough to cause them to rabbit. While she watched the couple argue, Photon signaled Sue Storm's cell phone again.

"This is Sue."

"Sue, this is Monica. I found her. She tripped SHIELD's radar screen just long enough for me to notice."

There was a couple of seconds on the other side of the signal, and then Sue asked, "Think it was long enough for SHIELD to notice?"

"No idea, but its safe to assume."

"Right... but their response time won't be as quick as yours. Okay, see if you can get a hold of Tandy or Jessica and see if they can meet you. Hold off contact until you have backup unless SHIELD shows up and knocks over the chessboard. Oh, and Monica, Simon's file said she was pretty traumatized by Iron Man and his pit bull, so you may want to approach her as a citizen and not as an Avenger."

"Got it. I'll call and set up a rendezvous. Talk to you in forty-five. Photon out." With that, she resumed her surveillance. She amplified her reception of visible light, and was able to see what the pair of girls were doing, but of course couldn't hear.

She signaled Jessica Drew's cell phone as she watched. It rang four times before it was picked up.

"This is Jessica."

"Jessica, this is Monica. I've got eyes on the target as we speak. Have you talked to Tandy and Tyrone?" Photon watched as the smaller girl had a minor melt-down and walked away.

"Not yet. I'm currently in orbit at the Grove, waiting for word."

"Okay, that's fine." Photon said. The bigger girl, their target, had taken a seat in a doorway and waited while the small one walked out to Ocean Avenue, paced back and forth in front of a bicycle shop, crossed the street, sat on a bench, stood and paced some more, then walked back into the alley. ""I need you to head over to Santa Monica. I'm overlooking Palisades Park on Ocean. Our target's here with her girlfriend. Sue wants for us to wait until she gets into town unless the bully boys show up to crash the party. And she suggests we approach as citizens."

"I figured. I've been out of costume since this morning, just in case. Give me a bit to get out of the neighborhood and onto the highway and I'll be right there. I'm in a rental."

"Did you save the receipt? Steve's going to want it." The two girls talked, seemed to make up, and then kissed. That brought an unconscious frown to Photon's face. While she would never admit to being a homophobe, Photon was still the same Lieutenant Monica Rambeau of the New Orleans Police Department's Harbor Patrol she was before she gained her powers and became an Avenger. She was still the same Catholic girl who was raised to believe in the book of Corinthians. For all of the Big Easy's supposed wild parties and a freewheeling lifestyle, the police department was still mostly made of Deep South conservatives. She wouldn't hold being gay against the girls... she just wouldn't be all that comfortable around them because of it.

It took a moment for her to realize that Spider-Woman had said something. "Sorry, I was distracted. What was that?"

"I said that given traffic, I'm probably half an hour away."

Photon watched as the pair had another argument, then another reconciliation, then walked across the street to Palisades Park. "All right. I'll find a place to change and resume surveillance. I haven't detected any sign that SHIELD is coming... I'm tracking their radio signals... so hopefully in the two minutes it'll take me to get out of costume, they won't have moved far, if at all."

xxxXXXxxx

They picked a picnic table under a tree that was slightly isolated, or at least had no one close by to stare at them. Louise sat with her back to the street, and Xander moved to sit opposite her. She put the bag down on the bench next to her and looked at her new friend. Louise was shaking; she didn't have the 'frightened rabbit' look any longer, but was visibly trembling.

Smiling, Xander took both of Louise's hands in hers. She gave Louise a gentle squeeze and said, "Hey... you know, I appreciate everything you've done and have tried to do. I'm not going to just abandon you, unless you ask me to go. It'll be all right."

Louise gave a quick nod. "I know. I'm just a little shaky. I think I'm past the 'holy shit you're a mutant' thing, and the 'holy shit you robbed a drug gang' thing and am into the 'holy shit I just crossed LA in three seconds on a rocket' thing. Coming down off the adrenaline, you know? I think when he finally find a place to stay, I'm going to crash for a week."

Xander laughed at that, and couldn't argue. "Okay. To business." She opened up the bag and looked in. It was about three-quarters full, and the money was a mix of denominations ranging from fives to hundreds. Xander looked up at Louise and shrugged. "And here I thought this would be easy. We need at least one more bag."

Louise looked over her shoulder at the road. "I think that bike shop sold backpacks. Would one of those work?"

"That would, yes. Here. Get two." Xander handed the other girl a pair of hundred dollar bills. "I'll be right here until you get back." While the other girl was gone, Xander watched the park, examining it for any possible danger. She kept half an eye on Louise as well, making sure nothing happened. Xander shouldn't have worried. Louise was back with two anonymous-looking blue backpacks within minutes. They were the small kind that long-distance cyclists wore.

"Okay... let's try not to mess this up." With that, Xander started removing all of the hundred dollar bills he could find, moving them from the large bag to one of the smaller ones. Then she moved to the fifties, then the twenties, and so on. Twenty minutes later, she ran out of room when there were only tens and fives left. "What are we up to?"

"Twelve grand and change. I lost track but didn't want to interrupt you. Sorry." Louise grinned, using the face Xander always associated with Willow's 'I'm cute, forgive me' look. She couldn't resist when Willow did that, nor could she really resist when Louise did it.

"Twelve grand and change is enough for some clothes and some food and maybe a way out of town."

"Out of town to where?"

Xander shrugged. "How far away is safe enough? San Francisco? Denver? Houston? How about New Orleans? I hear Miami is beautiful this time of year." He had that 'love me for what I am' smile that was the only proof against Willow's 'I'm cute' looks.

Louise zipped up the two smaller bags. "Why stop at Miami? How about Paris?" She stood, waiting. Xander soon joined her, having counted out ten of the hundred dollar bills. He gave five of them to Louise and kept the rest for himself.

"Because, mon petit chou, all I can remember from French class is how to say 'yes,' 'no,' 'shit,' and 'my little cabbage'." They walked back toward the road, holding hands.

"My little cabbage?" Louise asked after a moment.

"It sounds better in French."

xxxXXXxxx

Above them, hanging in the air, Photon signaled Spider-Woman once again. "Jessica, Danvers and her girlfriend are on the move. Just walking and talking as casual as they can. And I haven't seen hide nor hair of SHIELD. We might have lucked out for once."

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note:** If you recognize anything, it belongs to DC Comics, Marvel Comics, or Mutant Enemy. Everything else is mine.

**Author's Note the Second:** 246, Code Purple is police radio code a gang-related shooting with casualties at an inhabited building.


	10. Friends in Low Places

**Friends in Low Places**

xxxXXXxxx

_"The point is not how long you live, but how nobly you live." - Seneca_

xxxXXXxxx

"Well, let's see. I don't know if I can pick just one. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Ramones, Johnny Cash, Judas Priest, the Smashing Pumpkins, the Foo Fighters." Xander was momentarily flummoxed. When she picked the brassiere out, she figured getting the 'front loader' option would be easier to put on than the back-hooks, but the bra wasn't cooperating. Or maybe it was her boobs. They wouldn't get all in, no matter how she pressed and pushed.

It took three tries, but finally she was in. Still looked funny to her unpracticed eye. And it felt weird. But at least it was on.

"I've never heard of the Foo Fighters. Are they an indy band?" There was a short pause, and then suddenly a mostly-green piece of cloth sailed over the door to the changing room. "Alex, what do you think of this shirt?"

Xander caught it, then spread it out. The green-and-white tie-dye pattern was cool, but it wasn't precisely what she wanted. "I don't know about the tie die. Maybe something solid-colored?" Xander tossed the shirt onto the top of the door, then twisted right and left to get a good look at the bra.

"So how about a favorite movie?" Louise's voice sounded closer.

"Sorry, but I absolutely refuse to name one single favorite movie. There are just too many amazing movies out there." Xander put her arms the sleeves of the red blouse and pulled it over her head. It was cut high enough so that she wasn't showing off, while still being comfortable. "I do have a desert island list, though." Xander turned one way, then the other. It was a good looking shirt.

"A desert island list?"

Xander opened the door and handed the tags from the bra and the blouse to the sales associate who was standing near the dressing room. Along with a pair of underwear Louise picked out for her (not a thong, thank whatever deity was watching for small mercies) and a skirt that came just a couple of inches below the level of her ass (another contribution by Louise), Xander was now in clothes that actually fit. _And look damned good on me_, she thought to herself.

Xander held up the over-sized t-shirt and jeans she'd walked in with and asked the sales clerk, "Do you have someplace we can burn these?"

The clerk nodded with a knowing grin. "Sure. You're not the first person to need an emergency wardrobe replacement."

"hrm-hurm." A girl with snow-white hair cleared her throat dramatically. Xander looked her way; she was standing there with a couple of sun dresses over her arm, and was looking at Xander with an expectant expression.

"Oh, sorry." Xander stepped out of the waiting room and the girl brushed past. Turning to the sales clerk, Xander smiled back. "Thanks."

She turned her attention to Louise, who was taking the time to seriously check out the new and improved Alexandra Harris. "It was something my some of my old friends came up with. If you were stuck on a desert island with only a generator, a television, and give video tapes, which five tapes would they be?"

"Video tapes? Wow... I haven't seen a video tape in eight or nine years. I don't even know anyone who has a VCR anymore." Louise made a spinning motion with her hand.

"Ah, well..." As Xander turned in place, she tried to think of something to cover the gaffe. She knew this wouldn't be the first time the ten year jump would catch her out. "This was a while ago. When I was a kid."

"Must have been." Louise repeated the motion, and Xander once again spun in place. "So what was your five?"

"Mine were Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Apocalypse Now, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Tootsie." Louise did it again with her hand, and Xander began to turn. Louise couldn't keep her face straight, though, and burst into giggles.

Xander aborted the spin. "Very funny."

"I thought so. So... Tootsie? That's the one where what's his name dresses up as a woman to get a job? Very gay rights of you!" Louise came up and put an arm around Xander and gave her a squeeze. Xander returned it, giving the smaller girl a kiss on the forehead while she was at it. "You look great. Much better than those rags you were wearing."

"Why thank you, my dear. And yes, that's 'Tootsie'. Dustin Hoffman should have won an Oscar for that performance. And funny!"

"I guess. I think I saw it once. My favorite is always going to be Titanic. I mean, even though you know that the ship's gonna sink, the romance is just so... romantic, you know? And Leonardo DiCaprio! He's one of those guys who is so pretty even I'd do him, you know?"

Xander grinned and gave Louise another little hug. "And that's just what romance is supposed to be. Romantic." She immediately added 'Titanic' to the list of things to be viewed as soon as possible so she wouldn't miss out on the references. And Leonardo DiCaprio? Wasn't he that kid in the Keanu Reeves movie?

The sales clerk cleared her voice pointedly. "Are you ready to check out?"

Xander looked the question to Louise, who nodded. "I think we are, yes," the smaller girl giggled. She, like Xander, was now dressed in new clothing. "Can you suggest a good place to get some walking around shoes? Nothing too fancy. Just... you know... everyday shoes."

The girl began ringing up their purchased with a bar code reader. "Well, that would depend. Are you , like, looking for running shoes, or like flats and sandals?" She punched a couple of buttons on the register. "That'll be $402.70."

As Xander counted out four one-hundred dollar bills and a five, the girl bagged up the extra underwear and shirts. "I'm thinking running shoes." She nodded and shrugged to the white-haired girl, who'd stepped into line behind her. Apparently Xander and Louise were actively conspiring to make her late for something.

"Then you're in luck. There's an Adidas store not too far away." The clerk said with a smile. She pointed toward the wall behind her as she talked. "Two blocks south on Ocean to Wilshire, then left on Wilshire. Go up to third, take a right, and its just one block down."

"Thanks again." The two young women stepped out of the boutique and onto Ocean Avenue again.

"Walk, or get a cab?" Xander asked.

They exchanged glances, and then said, "Cab!" simultaneously.

xxxXXXxxx

Inside the store, Tandy Bowen flashed an ID card at the sales clerk "My name's Dagger and I'm an Avenger. I'd like to ask you some questions about everything that's happened since those women entered your store..."

xxxXXXxxx

"Jessica, this is Monica. What's your 20? They just got into a cab." From the opposite side of Ocean Avenue, Photon watched as their target and her girl friend got drove off. She gave a quick wave to Cloak, who had high over-watch from the roof of the clothing store. The man's black cloak, from which he took his name, swirled around him and suddenly he was gone, off following the cab.

Photon made sure she wasn't being watched, then transformed into a packet of radio waves. In a fraction of a second she was on the sidewalk ahead of the cab, watching as it passed. She repeated this every few seconds.

"I'm on the 10, about to exit onto Ocean." Spider-Woman replied.

"Good. I'm hopping down Ocean trying to... whoops. Hold on. They turned onto Wilshire." Photon backtracked, then restarted jumping ahead of the cab. "Anyway, I'm trying to keep an eye on the cab while they move. They just turned north onto Wilshire. Get here when you get here."

"All right, I'm off 10 and heading south on Ocean. You said turn north on Wilshire?"

"Roger. North on Wilshire." She hopped past the cab, only to lose it in a turn. "Damn it!"

"What's up, Monica? Do you need assistance?" It was Sue's voice. "I'm about twelve minutes out from your position."

"No. Lost them in a turn. Wait one." The problem with converting yourself to radiation to move was that you moved in straight lines. Beams of light didn't visibly bend unless in a gravity field a lot stronger than the Earth's. She hopped back, turned the corner, and jumped again. Hopped back to the corner, turned again... and there was Cloak on the roof of a shoe store, waving toward her.

"Okay, I've reacquired the target." The target was paying the cabbie while the girlfriend was holding open the door to a shoe store. "Pick up Dagger and get over here as quickly as you can."

Within five minutes, Spider-Woman's SUV pulled up to the curb just before it would be visible inside the shoe store. Dagger casually leaned on the wall out of sight of the store's interior. She gave a quick high sign to her partner, Cloak, who perched on the roof. Photon leaned on the trunk of a car across the street. Except for Cloak, all of them were out of costume.

With a jaunty flip of her collar, Jessica Drew strode past the store front, pausing for a moment to run her fingers quickly through her hair, using her reflection in the store's window as a mirror. When she was out of sight of the store, she turned toward Photon.

"Okay, we've got the target and her girlfriend and three sales people. Two more customer's wandering around," she said over the radio. And then they sat and waited. At the seven minute mark, the Invisible Woman stepped out of thin air next to Photon and joined the stake out.

At the sixteen minute mark, the two girls walked out of the shoe store and onto the sidewalk.

xxxXXXxxx

"Au contraire, mon... um... what's the French word for 'sister'?" Xander laughed as they walked out onto Third Avenue. "You haven't lived until you experience the joy that is a deep friend Twinkie!" There was a happiness that came from wearing a brand new pair of shoes. Most people never thought of it, but all people experienced it, and Xander had allowed herself to fall backward into the joy. But it was not to last.

"Karen Danvers?" The woman who addressed them was tall, though not as tall as Xander. She was dressed impeccably in a business suit, was blonde, and wore dark glasses. And it was clear to Xander as she moved that this woman was used to getting her way. The dark-skinned woman in the silver power-suit next to her screamed 'cop' or 'bodyguard' or 'enforcer'. "We need to speak to you."

"Oh God, Alex... its that girl from the clothing store. The one who was behind us in line." Xander followed Louise's gaze and nodded. It was the girl. They'd apparently been under observation for a while.

"Stay behind me, Louise. Don't move. You'll be okay." Xander shoved the bags containing their clothing and shoe purchases into Louise's hands then turned to address the speaker. "Leave us alone! We haven't done anything wrong, and you aren't going to dump me in some SHIELD rat hole! What do I have to do, kill you?"

Everybody froze. Everybody.

"We didn't mean to startle you, Karen. We're not here to hurt you. And no one wants to fight you. We just want to talk, okay?"

"You keep calling me Karen. Why are you calling me Karen?"

"That's your name, right? Karen Danvers?"

Xander froze in place. She looked to her left and right, clearly marking the positions of Dagger and Spider Woman. "I'm not this Karen Danvers, lady. You got the wrong person."

Sue Richards' frown was quick, and disappeared almost immediately, replaced by the conciliatory neutral expression. "My apologies; I don't mean to upset you." The woman carefully and slowly removed her sunglasses and pocketed them. She then held her hands up, fingers spread wide, in the universal 'not trying to be threatening' pose. "You'd prefer to be called Alexandra Harris, then?"

"Well, yeah. It's my name."

"Okay, Alexandra; that's not a problem. Please try and stay calm. We're not SHIELD, and we're not the Avengers. I'm Susan Richards, the Invisible Woman. You might have seen me on TV or read about me in the newspaper." She raised her hands, both wide open. "These are my associates, Photon, Spider Woman, and Dagger. We're not here to fight you or hurt you or your friend in any way. We just want to talk to you and then make you an offer."

"Alex?" Louise had closed up on Xander from behind to the point that the two women were touching.

"Give me a second, sweetie." Xander glanced from side to side, taking in the exact positions of the two women who were flanking them. "Susan Richards? Fantastic Four Susan Richards? The Invisible Woman?" The confusion was apparent on Xander's face. "Sure... so its not the Avengers who are chasing us, its the Fantastic Four. That is so much of an improvement!" The sarcasm was so thick it could be cut with a knife.

"Alexandra, think. Do you see my husband here? Or my brother? Or the Thing? Its just me. And we just want to talk to you. Like I said, we're not with SHIELD, and we're not with the Avengers. Nobody here wants to fight you or arrest you. We just want to talk, and maybe offer you and your girlfriend some help. If nothing else, we'd like to get out from under SHIELD's surveillance umbrella, because they and the Avengers are still combing the city for you."

"Okay. You just want to talk. Fine. We're all here and nobody's going anywhere. So talk."

"I'd prefer to do this in private."

Xander didn't even deign to respond.

The Invisible Woman sighed. "All right. Then how about this. Let me tell you enough to convince you that we need to get the hell off this street as quickly as possible."

Xander thought it over. "You've got thirty seconds. Then I am taking Louise and leaving. And trust me, you will not be able to stop me."

The older woman nodded. "Okay... you probably don't know this, but SHIELD has the skies over the city blanketed with a deep radar pulse set to detect high-velocity, high-density objects." The black woman next to Richards spoke for the first time. She had a rather thick but understandable southern accent. "This sort of system is normally used to track artillery shells for counter-battery fire. Its also useful for tracking people who can fly at supersonic speeds and whose flesh is dense enough to bounce bullets."

"Wait... they can track me?" Xander scanned the skyline and the surrounding area, looking through buildings and people as needed. He didn't see anyone approaching. "That means they're going to come here!"

The black woman spoke again. "If they were coming, Ms. Harris, they'd already be here. You're safe for now, but we need to get you off the street."

"We just want to talk to you." Sue Richards took a careful step forward, putting a one-foot thick invisible barrier or force between the girl and herself just in case. "Listen to what we have to say, and if you don't like what you hear, you're free to leave and we will see you on your way to any place you want to go."

"If we don't like what we hear? You've got... what... a business proposal for us?"

Richards actually grinned. "Something like that."

"Why did you call me Karen Danvers just now? Who is Karen Danvers?" Xander tried to think. He knew that Ms. Marvel was Carol Danvers, but couldn't think of anyone else from the Marvel Universe whose name matched that.

"We can talk about that later, Ms. Harris. Right now, we should get out of the sight of traffic cameras and other surveillance. Okay?"

"Louise?" Xander spoke to the other girl without turning around. "Louise, what do you think? We were talking about getting out of the city anyway. They'll help us."

"Can we trust them, Alex? Can we?"

"Do we have a choice?" Xander glanced at the women again. She didn't recognize the names 'Dagger' or 'Photon', but she did recognize 'Spider Woman'. And she knew the Invisible Woman. "I don't think they can stop me if I decide to get us out of here. But I think we can trust them, at least for a little bit."

"I'm scared, Alex."

"I know, honey. It'll be okay."

Xander was quiet, thinking. Finally, she stepped away from Louise. "Okay, we'll come talk to you. But first? You should think about not putting these things up between us if you want us to trust you." With that, Xander reached out and knocked on the invisible wall of force as if it were a wooden door. "Just saying."

xxxXXXxxx

Sue Richards just stood there for a second, a little gobsmacked that the girl had known all along that her supposedly invisible wall of force had gone up between them. "Sorry, it was just a precaution."

"No, I get it... you know what? If I'd been you, I probably would have put up a force field too." The Harris girl put an arm around her girlfriend and said something too soft. The smaller girl was obviously on the edge of panicking.

"Come on. Let's get you off the street. Are either of you hungry? Is there anything we can get you either on the way to our safe house or while we're there?" Photon stepped aside and gestured for the pair to follow as they made their way to the parked SUV.

Spider Woman opened the back door. When the Harris girl climbed into the back of the truck, it leaned to the right until the girl shifted herself to sit in the exact middle of the back seat. The back end of the truck had visibly settled. The girlfriend climbed in after and snuggled close as doors were closed. The Invisible Woman took the shotgun, and Spider Woman waited until Cloak, Dagger, and Photon were in the chaser-car before pulling out.

"So..." Richards turned in her seat in order to speak to their passengers face to face. "Like I said, call me Sue. Can I call you Alex?"

Harris girl gave the Invisible Woman a long look before shaking her head. "Only Louise calls me Alex. You can call me Xandra, though. Harris is my father, and I don't want to be reminded of him."

"Louise?"

Harris' girlfriend spoke up. "That's me. I'm... um..." she stopped, almost embarrassed that she spoke out. "I'm Louise. Louise Fulford, ma'am. We're dating." The girl seemed to shrink against the Harris girl, whose glare dared Sue to say anything about their relationship.

"Nice to meet you Louise." Sue took a deep breath. "Louise, Xandra, I know you're both scared, but I want you to know, we're not going to hurt you. As long as you're with us, in fact, we're not going to let anyone else hurt you either, okay? So try to calm down as much as possible."

Louise bit on her lip before saying, "I'm not afraid of you. Not while I'm with her." She poked a thumb toward the Harris girl.

The look on Xandra's face confirmed that if anything did happen to Louise, Alexandra Harris would make the whole wide world smart for it.

"By the way," Spider Woman interjected. "The word you were looking for earlier? Its soeur."

xxxXXXxxx

Tony Stark shifted slightly, hating the fact that the hospital insisted that he still wear that silly gown despite feeling perfectly fine. Of course, he'd had Jarvis drop off a pair of running shorts for him to wear under the hospital gown, but the lack of shoes any more substantial than a pair of flip-flops was disconcerting. He hated flip-flops.

He glanced up at the sleeping figure of Carol Danvers, then back to the file in his hands. "A pair of Danvers," he said in an exaggerated southern drawl. "What are the odds?" Karen Danvers was a very interesting girl. And of course, it put him in a truly difficult position.

It wasn't that he was heartless. His every sympathy went out to this girl; her father deserved to be chained to two teams of horses and slowly pulled apart. And then his pieces needed to be cut to ribbons, pissed on, and then set on fire and fed to the pigs.

On second thought, no. That would probably be bad for the pigs.

She had the trauma of the sexual assault, the trauma of her mutant powers manifesting, and the trauma of waking up in a SHIELD hospital and being treated like a terrorist. It was obvious to Stark, though he would be the first to admit that he couldn't prove it, that the girl had suffered some sort of dissociative break with reality, and had come up with the Alexandra Harris identity as a way to reconcile herself with the world.

He wondered what she had been up to for the past two years. Probably living like an in an alley somewhere, eating out of dumpsters, and stealing everything she needed to survive. And all the while her shattered psyche put itself back together into its present shape. He'd seen it before. Years ago, way, way back in the 80s, this mid-level office worker, one of the thousands of nameless drones working to keep New York City running, had lost his entire family to gang activity. The guy started dressing up in red tights and calling himself Captain Freedom. Broke up a bunch of muggings. Saved a couple of lives, and then was shot to death and killed in a restaurant hold-up.

Of course, Captain Freedom had just been this guy. Karen Danvers had super powers. And that made all the difference in the world. No matter how much pity he had for her story, the fact that she was not only super-powered, but crazy and super-powered meant she was potentially a deadly menace to anyone around her.

He wrote a couple of notes. _Call Reed Richards to consult on redesigned power nullifier._ The one they had was clearly not up to snuff when it came to stopping an Omega. Also, _Possible deployment of Thor clone? Esp. if Sentry useless._ And, _Contact Xavier institute for assistance with mutant Y/N?_

He lifted his head when he heard the low moan coming from Ms. Marvel. He stood and approached the bed, taking her hand in his. "Shh... shh... its all right, Carol. You're going to be all right." And this was the truth. What with her naturally accelerated healing abilities, and the special techniques and therapies Reed Richards and Stephen Strange had used, most of the deep damage the Danvers girl had caused when she... did... whatever it was she did... was already healed. The skin of her face, scalp, and shoulders was no longer blackened but was instead as smooth and scarless as that of a newborn baby in almost all places. There were still some areas that were angry-red, but at least she didn't have any more blisters.

Her hair had been cut close to the scalp to give her an even look, but that would grow back.

No, what worried him was her eye. The right eye was still milky white and sightless, and the doctors were saying that it might never recover, predicting a high possibility that she could be blind on that side for the rest of her life. He'd already sketched out a design for a cybernetic replacement eye on the back of one of the pages in the file.

"Hmmshpht." Ms. Marvel's head shifted so that her uncovered, functional eye was pointed in his direction. Her tongue flicked at her top lip a few times before she tried again. The lack of firmness mixed Danvers' voice into the stereotypical combination of what Stark's mind called the highly anesthetized mumble and just woke up slur. "... 'ony..."

"Yeah, I'm here, Carol. Welcome back to the world of the living."

"... is 'awshpal?"

"Yeah, Mount Sinai. Don't worry, we've got people here around the clock looking out for you."

"... ngur"

"No, she's still at large. I've got Janet and the guys out looking for her. They've pinned her down in Los Angeles, though, and the minute she moves, we'll be ready for her. Now go back to sleep. You've still got some healing to do, young lady."

Ms. Marvel's head shifted again, slightly, and she closed her eye. Right before she drifted off, she mumbled, "... molder d'you..."

It made Stark laugh. "Yeah, you're older than me. By two months. Big deal."

xxxXXXxxx

Xander's eyes widened as he recognized what he was seeing. The cars were pulling through a security gate, but in the distance he was seeing jumbo jets lining up for take-off, or taxing into position at a terminal.

"Is this LAX?"

The driver, Spider Woman, nodded and said, "Give the big girl a cigar." She spoke to the guard for a moment and was waved through. Their convoy of two vehicles drove down a short frontage road to a hangar, in front of which was a rather impressive looking jet aircraft. It didn't have the pointy-cigar shape of the Gulfstream jets he'd seen all over the place on TV, but it also didn't have the brick with wings that logically shouldn't be flying look of the Avengers quinjet. This was somewhat in the middle.

"Are we getting on that?" Louise asked. "Where are you taking us?"

Sue Richards turned to face them. "To a safe house. Right now Janet van Dyne and SHIELD know you're in Los Angeles. We're going to let them think that about you while getting you someplace safe. You can spend a couple of days at the safe house, during which we'll talk about that proposition. And if you turn us down, we'll put you back on the plane to wherever you want to go."

Xander thought about it for a minute. "What if we want to leave the country? Say, go to Tokyo, or Lisbon, or Moscow?"

Richards smiled. "Then we drop you off in Tokyo or Lisbon or Moscow. We're not kidnappers, Alex. We might actually turn out to be some of the best friends you'll ever meet."

xxxXXXxxx

Spider-Man came into the conference room carrying the message hands. As he entered, he read it off the paper aloud. The people who were checking the traffic cameras think they have her. He looked up, still speaking. "She was sighted over on... where the heck is everyone?"

The only person in the room was Sentry. "Well, that is an interesting question. Black Widow implied that she was returning to New York. Yellowjacket and the Wasp decided to head back to their hotel room until we got some official word. Wonder Man hasn't returned yet. Oh, Ares arrived. He's downstairs in the cafeteria, getting himself something to eat."

"Oh." Spider-Man felt a little deflated. "Well, they found her on the traffic cameras. They said... Spider-Man began tapping on the computer. They said that they'd have the surveillance shots up for us right... here." The two of them looked at the monitors as the black and white traffic pictures appeared.

Is that her? Spider-Man asked. It was a statuesque blonde coming out of a shoe store in the company of a shorter, thinner blonde. They were smiling, obviously talking. Two other women flanked the store. In the next shot, the target was being confronted by the two flankers, as well as two other women who seemed to have come across the street.

More shots. More confrontation. A semi-heated discussion.

It was seven pictures in when Spider-Man suddenly reaction. "Oh, damn. That's Sue Richards. That right there..." he put his fingertip on the computer screen so as to make no mistake. "That is the Invisible Woman. I think this one..." he moved his finger... "is Dagger. And I'll bet she..." another finger-move. "... is Photon."

Spider-Man picked up the phone and dialed Janet's hotel room number.

Sentry's teeth clenched so hard that it was audible across the room. "She's as good as gone, then. Even if we find this location they'll have moved her by now. He slammed his hand down on the edge of the desk so hard that a chunk of the tabletop some two feet square broke off and shattered."

xxxXXXxxx

The plane was in the air within the air, winging eastward. The interior was impressive to look at, all cherry wood and white highlights. There was a row of couches, plus individual, all of which were centered on a small table in the middle of the plane, what looked like a big-screen television, and even a set of bookshelves. Bookshelves on a plane was something that Xander would never have really expected, and it bothered him somehow. All together, the interior of the plane gave Xander the impression of a studio apartment's living room.

"Take a seat anywhere. We'll be taking off shortly." The Invisible Woman took off her jacket and handed it to a young woman who had appeared from the back of the plane as they boarded and waved Xander and Louise to the seats. Xander paused just long enough to cause a logjam behind her. The young woman the Invisible Woman called Dagger squeezed past and settled into one of the couches. She smiled at Xander and nodded.

"Its okay. Anywhere will do. Though with your build and weight, it might be better on a couch. Your girlfriend can sit with you, or wherever she likes." Sue Richards said with a smile.

Xander opened his mouth to say, _She's not my girlfriend._ but closed it before he could. He wasn't really sure what was going on with Louise, but she was a sweet girl, and she was a friend, and maybe there was a chance they'd be something more than really good friends. But he didn't want to ruin anything, so he kept his mouth shut and sat down on the couch opposite Dagger. Louise sat next to Xander, and leaned in to snuggle.

Photon, Spider Woman, and a tall, thin black man followed them in. Except for the man, who sat next to Dagger, the Invisible Woman, Spider Woman, and Photon all took up individual seats. There was some quiet small talk between neighbors, but no one said much. They were all waiting for the take-off.

"Alex," Louise whispered. "Do you think they're going to throw us in prison or something?"

Xander shook her head. "No, sweetie... I think they want to recruit me for something. I just can't figure out what."

"Do you think they work for Captain America?"

That question caused Xander to stare at Louise sharply. "What do you mean? Captain America is an Avenger."

Louise furtively looked around, then leaned in. " It was in all the newspapers and on the news. I remember it because of the big headlines and all those special banners the news programs used. It said Captain America had betrayed the Avengers and was a terrorist now."

Xander couldn't help it. _"Are you fucking kidding me?"_ Louise flinched, and every other head in the plane's passenger compartment turned to stair at the pair. Xander leaned closer to Louise and whispered, "Are you fucking kidding me? Captain America is no more a terrorist than I'm a Jedi Knight! If something happened to make Captain America leave the Avengers, then the Avengers are on the wrong side. I don't even read Marvel and know that much for sure."

"Ah-hem." The sound of a voice making the fake clearing your throat sound got Xander's attention. Photon was staring a question at her. "Everything all right with you two?"

"Yeah, peachy. Are you... whoa!" Xander was interrupted abruptly by the rather roller-coaster-esque feeling of a small plane suddenly leaving the ground and accelerating into the air. She waited until everything was settled before speaking again. "Could one of you explain how Captain America could possibly be labeled a terrorist?"

Everyone's gaze turned toward Sue Storm, except for Xander, who was still staring at Photon.

"You mean you haven't heard?" Photon asked.

"I've been in a coma for the last five months. I don't know anything about what's going on."

The Invisible Woman spoke up, finally. "Well... that'll give us something to chat about. I think its only fair for you to know what's happened while you were out, so that when we make our proposal to you, you go in with your feet on solid ground."

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note:** If you recognize it, it belongs to either DC Comics, Marvel Comics, or Mutant Enemy. If you do not recognize it, its mine.

**Author's Note the Second:** Yes, it is true. I am posting this story under the names Worldmaker (on Fan ) and ChefJackButler (on Twisting the Hellmouth). I appreciate the concern, but both names are me, and as such, I'm not plagiarizing myself.


	11. Mere Anarchy is Loosed Upon the World

**Mere Anarchy Is Loosed Upon the World**

xxxXXXxxx

_"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Meade_

xxxXXXxxx

"Hey, Hank."

"Peter?"

"Yeah, hey. Anyway, could you put Janet on, please?" Spider Man stared at the monitor as he spoke on the phone, wondering exactly how he was supposed to break this news to his team leader.

"Yeah, hold on." There was the distinctive clunking sound of a phone being set down earpiece first on a table. Peter tapped on the keyboard, bringing up subsequent pictures, watching as the Danvers girl talked to Sue Richards, then followed Sue and her team to a bunch of waiting vehicles. He stopped on the last image, the one showing the vehicles pulling out, and double-checked the time stamp. This had been nearly an hour and a half ago. Given the resources available to the Invisible Woman, they could be anywhere in the city by now. If they'd stayed in the city, that is. The traffic cams had lost the two-car caravan Richards' team was driving in shortly thereafter. Whomever had planned their route had been aware of where the blindspots in the city's coverage were.

"Peter, what's going on? Hank and I were about to come back to the office. Give you and Sentry a chance to get something to eat."

"Yeah, that's kind of you, Janet." Spider-Man paused, still looking at the surveillance pictures. "I just thought I'd call and let you know that we found everyone's favorite overwhelmingly powerful delusional lunatic. Facial recognition software got a pop over in Santa Monica coming out of a shoe store within camera range. That's the good news."

There was a pause. "Okay, so what's the bad news?"

"Looking at the images we have, it appears she walked out of the shoe store in the company of another young lady and were immediately confronted by a blonde woman who I will bet my next paycheck is Susan Richards, accompanied by at least three other people."

When the response came, it was loud enough that Peter held the phone away from his ear. "Are you fucking _kidding_ me! God damn fucking shit! Son of a bitch!" Peter didn't say a word; Janet only swore rarely, and on those rare occasions when she did, it was best to just let her get it all out. "_Fuck!_ Son of a fucking _whore!_ God damn piece of... Fuck! Fuckety! Fuck! **_SHIT!_**" Janet's voice suddenly faded, and then the earlier clunking sound was repeated, but even louder. In the distance, Spider-Man could hear the Wasp still yelling.

After a few seconds of this, Hank's voice sounded. "Hey, Peter, this is Hank again. What the hell just set Janet off? She just started swearing a blue streak and threw the phone across the room. What's going on?"

"Well, Hank, its like this: our mystery girl got caught on a traffic camera having a bit of an impromtu kaffeeklatsch with some of Captain America's people. I've identified Sue Richards for sure." Peter tapped on the computer and the image centered on Sue Richards, then switched focus to the other people. He tried to bring it in closer, but unfortunately the magic enhance button was only a myth caused by forensic procedural shows. "I am not certain because the angle is off, but I'm fairly sure that at least two of the other people are Tandy Bowen and Monica Rambeau. And if that is Tandy Bowen, that me-"

"Right, if its Dagger then Cloak is somewhere in the wings," Hank interrupted.

"Exactly. So call it the Invisible Woman, Photon, Cloak, Dagger, and another woman I can't ID from the angle. She somehow manages to keep her face out of the cameras view the entire time."

"That can't be unintentional."

"My thoughts also, Peter said. If the hair color and general build weren't wrong, I'd say she was the Black Widow, given the way she moves and the fact that she's aware of the cameras. Looks like intelligence agency training. But hey, what do I know. Maybe it is just a coincidence."

"All right. Here's what we do." Peter could hear Hank Pym sigh. "I'll get Janet calmed down and we'll be in as quickly as possible. I want you to send out an AllCall and get everyone back to SHIELD HQ. What's the time on this?"

"About an hour and a half."

"Right. And I suppose they didn't hang around in front of a shoe store longer than necessary. Okay, we'll be there ASAP. Like I said, I'll get Janet calmed down and have her call Tony to update him. Get everybody in. We'll figure out what we're doing once we're there. But if it were my guess, I'd say the girl and Sue's people are long gone. Hour and a half? I doubt they're even in California anymore."

In the background, Spider-Man could hear Janet yelling. _ "We need to get back to New York! Get everybody rounded up. Wheels up in an hour."_

xxxXXXxxx

Five hours in a plane in order to go from one side of the country to the other. The knowledge that she could have covered the same distance in half... no, a thir... no, a quarter of the... an _eighth_ of the time had she really, really been pushing it had turned the trip into an exercise in endless tedium.

The sun had just been hitting the horizon when the plane landed at Key West International Airport. Xander had heard of Key West, of course, but had no idea that the island had an airport at all, much less an international-level airport. But it had. Apparently Key West was bigger than she ever suspected. From the airport, they'd packed into a couple of vans and gone driving, and again Xander was surprised. Being a California native, Xander was used to long drives but for some reason she'd always had the amaxingly provincial attitude that everywhere other than California and maybe Texas and Alaska were small, small places.

Not so. It took them nearly an hour and a half to reach the safe house on No Name Key. The building was a big stucco and wood construction that seemed right out of one of a Robert Mitchum movie, with a big iron gate and a wall made of the same material as the house. It had a large yard, overlooked a body of water that Sue Richards had called Spanish Harbor , and was surrounded by palm trees.

When they'd reached the house, the night had turned incredibly dark. There were no street lights anywhere on the island, for some reason. Xander wouldn't have noticed, except when he got out of the car and looked up.

Here, where there was no light pollution to speak of, the sky blazed even more brightly for him than normal.

It was mesmerizing.

The combined group of superheroes and refugees were met at the door by a stoop-shouldered, balding older gentleman with a friendly face and a clothing sense that the old male Xander would have appreciated. He was dressed in cut-off blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and a Hawaiian shirt loud enough to be heard in Los Angeles. The man, who introduced himself only as Delaney, had shown her and Louise to the room the pair would be staying in for the duration and then left them alone in order to get settled. Get settled in this case meant put the handful of clothing they'd purchased before being picked up away in the room's dresser and closet, taking a very quick shower in the attached bathroom, and laying down for a nap.

Now, a few hours later, Xander found herself sitting up in bed, in the dark, with Louise's head in her lap, while Xander idly stroked the girl's hair and stared out of the large bay window at Spanish Harbor. Every once in a while she would sing, sotto voce, a snippet or two of the song. But for the most part she hummed. It had put a smile on Louise's face, which was good enough for Xander.

Xander had never been out of California before. On one hand, this was all very exciting and new. On the other hand, it was all very terrifying, and Xander was grasping at any possible anchor to stay stable. In this case, it was Louise, his new friend... his new girlfriend... the only person in this world who had been nice to him and trusting and trustworthy.

"... mmm mmm-mmm-mmm when hearts like ours meet. I fell for you like a child mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm I fell into a burning mmm-mmm-mmm..."

Xander still didn't know if he could trust the heroes who had brought them here, but she recognized that now, with everything balanced on the knife-edge, she might not have any choice.

The revery was broken by a quiet knocking at the door. Xander gently lifted Louise and repositioned her on the bed, then kissed the girl's forehead. Louise stirred slightly, and mumbled, "'lex? Whisgnun?"

"Nothing. Just a knock at the door. Go back to sleep. I'll be right back, sweetheart."

Louise's response was a combination snore, nod, and shrug. The knock sounded a second time, and Xander got to the door in time to see the person on the other side, catch herself from knocking a third time.

It was the younger super-heroine. The one that the Invisible Woman called Dagger. Pretty, taller than Louise, with waist-length hair that was as white as snow. "Hey." The girl looked nervous. "I'm... uh... I'm Tandy. Tandy Bowen. How are you two doing?"

Xander stepped into the hall, closing the door behind her." Well, let's see... my day started hastily escaping a drug shooting, followed by shopping and, oh yeah, being snatched by a group of superheroes I don't trust but see as a better alternative than the other guys hunting me."

Dagger looked confused. "A drug shooting?"

"Yep. Great way to start the day."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that"

"Yeah. And I have to tell you, half of me wishes I'd knocked you guys down and taken off on my own. So right now, I feel like I'm in a life raft on the ocean after my ship sank." Internally, Xander winced at the hostile tone that her words had taken. "And Louise... she's been through all that I've been through and doesn't have the benefit of, well, you know."

If Dagger was offended, she didn't show a trace of it. "Yeah, that's understandable." Dagger was quiet for a moment before adding, "You know you guys are adoreable, right?" Xander blushed, which the other woman took as an invitation to continue. "No, really. You are. I bet you make each other really happy."

"We... I... You know, it's... Well, we're working on it."

Tandy just smiled. "It's okay. Its like that with new relationships sometime." She gave Xander a careful look. "Not to be too nosy, but I'm guessing you haven't been out for long? Do your parents even know?"

It took Xander a moment before she realized what Tandy meant. The realization caused her to blush, which in turn caused Tandy to laugh politely.

"Did you need something?" Xander gritted her teeth, on the edge of irritation.

Dagger's face went blank, as if she'd just realized she'd forgotten something. "Oh yeah! Sue... you know, the Invisible Woman? She asked me to see if you'd come down to the dining room and talk to her for a bit. She's got some questions for you."

"Just me? Or the both of us?"

"Um... just you, for now. I think."

"Okay, hold on. Let me tell Louise where I'm going to be." Xander stepped back in the room and closed the door behind her. She stood there, leaning against the door, listening to her new girlfriend sleeping. She carefully shook Louise's shoulder until the girl had once again opened an eye. "Louise, the Invisible Woman wants to talk to me downstairs. I'll be back in a few." Again the snore-shrug-nod, and Louise was back asleep. Moments later, Xander was back in the hallway.

"Its down this way." Dagger led the way to the stairs.

xxxXXXxxx

Xander had to admit, it was a huge dining room, made to appear even larger by the huge windowed doors along one wall. Looking through them, she could see the backyard patio lit in blue, with a bluelit path leading to the pool. One of the women... she found to her surprise she'd forgotten her name... was doing laps. Waiting for her in the dining room was the Invisible Woman and Photon, who smiled and gestured to a chair near where they were sitting. In front of them on the table were some flat electronic devices that looked for all the world like a datapad from Star Trek.

"Xandra, have a seat. We just wanted to talk to you and let you know where things stood." Sue Richards had a beautiful smile, but Xander could tell that it didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Um... yeah, okay." Xander sat. Dagger sat down next to her. "So..."

Before anyone could say anything, a side door opened and Delaney, the man Xander was told owned the house, shuffled in carrying a tray piled with triangle cut sandwiches and a large carafe of something brown and iced. The man put the tray on the table in between the three women, along with a small stack of paper plates and a similar stack of classic red Solo-brand cups. He stood for a moment next to Photon and asked, "You ladies need anything else?"

"Thank you, James. No. You've done way too much already." Sue Richards smiled at the man, who nodded and faded back through the kitchen door.

There was an uncomfortable silence as the four women took turns glancing at each other.

"So," Xander managed to say. "Florida. Never been to Florida before. Its very, I dunno... Miami Vice. Half-expect Don Johnson to come through the door yelling at everybody to freeze."

"Yes, well." Sue tried to hide a smile. "Hopefully, if everything works out okay and we -"

"You guys explained what's going on while we were on the plane, and I read about this registration thing in the paper," Xander interrupted. "What I remember from the article I read didn't make it sound all that..." he floundered for a word "... it didn't sound so much like it came off the desk of Heinrich Himmler in the newspaper article. I mean, the thing sounded bad, but it didn't have any about the stuff you people told me about... all that behind the scenes stuff."

"Yeah, they're keeping a lot of the worst stuff out of the papers." Sue agreed.

"But how the hell does that happen in America?" Xander gritted his teeth. "Don't get me wrong, I'm sorry as hell that a lot of people died because the a bunch of over-enthusiastic kids, all of whom had superpowers, screwed up because they were chasing ratings and got a town killed. That's epically bad. I mean, serious _'Sophie's Choice'_ level tragedy. And I guess the government does have a point and all about how its dangerous to have untrained amateurs duking it out on the streets and potentially endangering innocent bystanders. But how does that make drafting everyone with superpowers into an army, or tossing them in jail for the rest of their lives, the right decision?"

"Well, in my opinion... in all of our opinions... it doesn't."

Xander continued as if the Invisible Woman hadn't said a word. "This can't be legal! It just can't be legal! Its un-American! And whatcha-callit... the Constitution thing. Unconstitutional! I almost flunked civics, but one would think that the Constitution would stop that sort of jackboot bullshit. Doesn't one of the Amendments say something about this?"

Sue nodded in agreement. "Yes. The Bill of Rights clearly makes this sort of thing illegal. But since 9/11, the government has been declaring pretty much anybody they don't like a terrorist. And Homeland Security says that terrorists don't have any rights that _decent people_ have to respect." The scorn and sarcasm dripping from her words was tangible. "So anyone who refuses to register is a terrorist, and can be disposed of as the government sees fit."

Xander closed her eyes and shook her head. "It was shocking. I really can't believe anyone who calls themselves a hero would go along with that crap."

"People were scared, including a bunch of the heroes. Scared people do stupid things."

"Is that why SHIELD was going to send me to a prison for the rest of my life for the crime of existing?" Xander stared into Sue's eyes, and when Sue looked away, he changed his gaze to meet Photon, who couldn't meet her eyes any better.

"Fuck me," Xander whispered.

They were quiet again for a while.

For lack of anything better to do, Xander grabbed a plate and a cup. The sandwiches turned out to be grilled cheese with some white kind of cheese she had never tasted before. They were good. The brown liquid was iced tea. It was sweeter than he expected.

As he ate, he watched the three women.

It was Dagger who spoke first. "When they started enforcing the registration act, some-"

"Yeah, that's another thing." Xander swallowed. "Since when are brand new laws enforced the minute they go into effect? I remember when California changed their emission laws, no one showed up on my Uncle Rory's doorstep the second it went into effect, shoving guns in his face because the cars in his dealership weren't up to code. There was a deadline to be in compliance like six months after or something. That's how these things work, normally, right?"

"Normally." Photon answered. "This time, though, the director of SHIELD had orders from the President of the United States to begin the enforcement of the law immediately."

"But that's stupid! How do you expect people to -" Xander paused, in shock. "I can't believe Nick Fury would do something like -"

The Invisible Woman shook her head. "Nick Fury's not Director of SHIELD. He was forcibly retired for his part in an unsanctioned attack on Latveria. Maria Hill is Director of SHIELD now."

That stopped Xander cold. "I have no idea who that is."

Again, things fell quiet.

When she felt calmer, Xander asked, "So what happened here? Why isn't anyone pointing out how badly this was all handled? Why isn't anyone talking? Why is this just the superheroes fighting each other? That makes no sense. Someone neds to ... I don't know... get on TV and talk about how the way SHIELD is acting is a really, really scummy thing. Why isn't anyone negotiating?"

Photon was shaking her head. "No one wants to negotiate. No one wants to take the chance; not after what happened to Goliath."

"Goliath?" Xander was confused. "Wait... Hank Pym? I thought he was Yellowjacket again."

The Invisible Woman stared at the table for a long while, and the other two women couldn't meet Xander's gaze. Finally, Sue Richards seemed to slump in on herself. "Not Hank Pym. Bill Foster."

"Who?" Xander searched his memory of Marvel characters, but couldn't put a face to the name Bill Foster. "Who's Bill Foster?"

"Bill Foster was a biochemist. I'm not sure of the whole story, but I do know he recreated the formula that let Hank Pym become Giant Man. Foster called himself Goliath."

"And he was murdered?"

"Yes." Xander could hear Sue Richards' teeth grinding. "He was murdered by Hank Pym and Tony Stark and my husband. They created a clone-robot version of Thor as a secret weapon whose primary operational code was based on the same code Hank used when he created Ultron. Ultron!"

There was more silence. Its weight grew painful.

"I'm sorry." It was all Xander could think to say. Sue just nodded.

"When the hell did Tony Stark become the mayor of Crazy Town?"

Again, silence.

"Um... not to change the subject, but how about we change the subject," Xander said with a sigh. "How's this going to work? Louise and I get locked away in a very pretty, very well-decorated jail until its safe for us to poke our heads out into the sunshine again?"

Everyone else took deep, long breaths.

"We're going to be hiding you here on No Name Key." Photon began. "Trust me, its the last place SHIELD will look for you. If we're lucky, they still think you're in California."

"We'd like you to stay here for now." Sue continued. "The house we're stashing you in has a big wall, so you can go out into the yard and use the swimming pool, but leaving the house's grounds will be out of the question, at least at first. Once we figure out if its safe, you'll probably be able to go out and the see the sights with an escort. No Name is over a hundred miles from the nearest SHIELD facility in Miami. You'll be fine."

"And hey, after a week or so we can probably assume that SHIELD's attention will be elsewhere." Dagger sounded bubbly and cheerful, but her body language said otherwise. "Once the heat's died down, I'm sure we can find a way for you and your friend to get out and around a bit. I mean, there's all kinds of beaches down here, and snorkeling, and we can even get you down to Key West if you want. Oh! And those tiny deer... this house is in the middle of a wildlife refuge for these cute little deer, and there are wild iguanas all over."

"And if, after a month or so, you choose to not stay with us," Sue Richards added, "We'll put you back on the plane and send you on your way. I promise."

"A month?" Xander just stared. "A month? We have to hide for a month?"

Tandy smiled, and this time it was a bit more genuine. "Think of it as a long Florida vacation! Work on your tan!"

"My tan, right." Xander was quiet. "We don't have what we need to live anywhere for a month. We've got like, two outfits each. I don't have any ID or anything..."

"We'll help you get that taken care of, don't worry," Photon said.

"I'm going to have to talk to Louise; see what she thinks." Xander couldn't miss the look that passed from the Invisible Woman to Photon. "What?"

"Well. I'm not sure how to broach this subject." Sue Richards looked nervous. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Sure. Won't guarantee I answer, but you can ask."

"Fair enough." Sue paused. "Louise is older than you, isn't she?"

"She's twenty-two, yeah. So what. You're older than me, for what that's worth. What's your point?"

Again, Photon and the Invisible Woman looked uncomfortable. Dagger was staring out at the swimming pool.

"And you're seventeen?"

"Yeah. I'll be eighteen in six months. What is this about?"

Sue sighed. "And can we... Christ! Should we assume that the two of you are sleeping together? And by 'sleeping with', I mean... are you having sex with her?"

"I don't see how that's anybody's business, but yeah, we are. So?" Xander's hands involuntarily clenched into fists.

"Xandra, by the laws of pretty much every state in the union, you're under-age. By law, even if you're doing this consensually, she's technically raped you."

Xander jumped to her feet, ready to... to... she wasn't sure what she was going to do. The Invisible Woman stood as well, bringing her hands up in an attempt to placate the younger woman. "I don't care, personally. I don't care. Like you say, you're almost eighteen and its obvious that you two care about each other and I'm certainly not going to make a stink about it. But the age of consent in California, where you were and where I presume you first... got together... is 18. And there aren't any exceptions for being six months away. Some people might try to get to you by going after her. You may want to -"

"Then they'll regret it." Xander had gone quiet. Very quiet. "You really, really don't want to think about what I would do to someone who tries to do that. I don't have a lot going for me in this world, but I have her and I have my abilities. She's my only friend in the whole wide world, and she's the only person who knows what I can do who doesn't walk around me like I'm some sort of dangerous animal who might attack at any moment." She smirked. "I noticed every time one of you gave me that sidelong glance. You're being nice, but you're also afraid of me. I get it. I understand. You don't know me."

Xander took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I'm not going to attack anyone. Not unless they attack me first. And I protect my friends. I don't care if its a street mugger or some goose-stepping agent of the government or a superhero. No one hurts my friends and gets away with it."

One of the glass doors opened and the woman who'd been in the pool stepped in, rubbing her hair with a towel. She stopped when she noticed everyone staring at her. "Um... what did I miss?" Noting the tension in the room, she added, "Everybody okay?"

That calmed things down. " Yeah, Jessica, everything's... we were just talking to our guest." Sue looked to Xander, who was staring at Jessica Drew with an odd look on her face.

"Oh, well... okay then." Jessica resumed rubbing at her hair. "I'm going to grab a shower and hit the hay. See you in the morning. Xandra, its nice meeting you."

As she left, Xander and Sue Richards took their seats. Xander's face was drawn as he thought deeply about something.

The Invisible Woman barely noticed at first. "You know, I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we honestly want to be your friend. And I don't mean just because we don't want you to be mad at us. We're really not that shallow." Sue looked up and noticed Xander's expression.

"Xandra?" No response. "Xandra, what's the matter?"

"Huh?" Xander jumped. "Oh... sorry, just thinking. Who was that?"

"Um... that was Spider Woman."

"Spider Woman... right." Xander looked over her shoulder in the direction the swimmer had gone. She didn't remember much about Spider Woman. It wasn't one of the few Marvel titles he did read, when he bought Marvel at all. But for some reason, he couldn't get it out of his head that Spider Woman was supposed to be a human being, while the woman who just walked through the room and up the stairs simply wasn't.

xxxXXXxxx

Tony Stark was swiftly reaching the point where he'd had enough of Maria Hill.

Almost as quickly as the team had arrived at their headquarters, Hill had stormed in with an armed rapid response team. She'd coralled the various Avengers into the briefing room and opened up on them with both barrels. Even the new arrival, Ares, was herded in. The only people missing were the Black Widow, who'd sought out her own way back to New York City, and Sentry, who'd sneered in contempt at the SHIELD team and left for his own abode above Stark Tower.

"Maria, you need to calm down, now." He agreed that she had a point; the Avengers hadn't been able to capture the Danvers girl. But the way she was making that point was unacceptable, and the woman herself wasn't making any friends doing it.

"Calm down? _Calm down?_ Listen, Stark, you and your team are resposible for letting the murderer of a federal officer slip through your fingers. And worse, she's now joined forces with Captain America and his band of terrorists! You're lucky you're not all in a shipping container on your way to the Gulag!"

Stark took a deep breath. "That's enough. There is no call for you to-"

"_Shut. The. Fuck. Up._" Hill got deep into Stark's personal space. "Don't say a fucking word, Stark. Not until I give you permission to speak." Hill looked around the room at the various Avengers. "You people screwed the pooch and now I'm going to have to clean up your mess. I don't have time for this, and neither do you. We need to be concentrating on bringing Captain America to justice and you're wasting time with a teenager."

From the other side of the room came a mumbled voice. It wasn't loud enough to tell what was being said, but it was loud enough for Hill to tell someone said something. What was that? She stormed around the table until she was face-to-face with Spider-Man. "Did you say something, shithead?"

Spider-Man stared at her for a moment. No one could see his expression through his mask, but it was clear that he held the woman in front of him in utter contempt. "Yeah, I said something. I said, 'Klingon justice is a unique point of view'. Step back."

"Oh look. Spider-Man cracked a joke. He made a funny. Tell me, shithead, what if I gave the order to round up your wife and your dear, sweet, grey-haired aunt. Would you think that was funny?"

"You do anything-" Spider-Man took a step toward her. Hill immediately went for her pistol but as far as Spider-Man was concerned she was a statue. He had her wrist in his grasp and she wasn't moving it for all the wide world. "Draw that gun and see what happens to you. I dare you," he said in a low, dangerous voice.

"Get your hands off of me." Hill demanded through gritted teeth. She tugged her wrist back, trying to shake Spider-Man's hold. Spider-Man didn't even move.

"Peter." Stark said, quietly.

Spider-Man looked at Stark for a long moment, and it seemed at first that he simply wasn't going to listen. "If anything happens to my family, Agent Hill; if my wife so much as comes down with a cold, I'll be coming to see you. Believe it."

He pushed Hill away with just enough of a shove to put the woman off-balance. She stared at Spider-Man for a good long while; no one else said a word. Hill took a step forward, looking for all the world like she was about to retaliate, but Wonder Man stepped between the pair.

"Back off." Hill might somehow think she was a match for Spider-Man, but she knew better when it came to Wonder Man. She raised her hands and took a step back. Simon turned to Peter and said, "And you, sit down and put a lid on it."

"All right, children. Now that the school yard nonsense is over..." Janet van Dyne was shaking her head. "Look, Maria, we've researched this girl. I honestly doubt she's going to -"

Again Hill interrupted. "And you think your opinion matters why, precisely? She's a federal fugitive who just so happens to be able to kick the shit out of your superweapon. Hill's face twisted in a mean-spirited smirk. And one of you put her in touch with the enemy."

"What?" Stark asked, shocked. "What enemy?" The Wasp asked simultaneously.

"Captain America."

"Since when is Cap the enemy?" It was Spider-Man again.

"Since he betrayed the country." Hill said this as if it was just that simple. As if that was the only explanation for what happened.

"Great." Wonder Man threw his hands up into the air. The ionic man shook his head and went to the windows, staring out over New York City.

"Now wait just a damned minute!" Spider-Man said. "The First Amendment still applies. He's allowed to disagree with the law."

"He's not allowed to disobey the law."

"But..." Spider-Man began.

_"I AM NOT HERE TO DEBATE THE SRA!"_ Hill shouted. "I am here because I want to know how Captain America found out about the girl. I am here because I want to know how he knew to send Richards, Rambeau, Drew, and the others to Los Angeles in the first place."

"Why are you coming to us?" Stark asked. The look on his face showed true confusion.

"Because, a copy of the girl's file was sent to a cut-out email address through multiple international servers and was cross-forwarded eight times before landing in an email account registered out of some small town in Belgium. And it came from the equipment you folks were using. So it was one of you. One of you," she repeated. "And so I came to make sure that one of you took a trip to the Gulag tonight."

"Wait just a God-damned minute!"

"Stark, I distinctly remember telling you to shut the fuck up." Hill turned toward the man. "I can justify tossing your ass in with whichever one of these assholes decided to betray you. So just shut the fuck up." She turned back to Spider-Man and once agains stepped up toward the man. "What's the matter, 'Pete'? Go all soft on us? You're Uncle Tony just not doing it for you anymore?"

"Just what the hell are you implying?" Spider-Man backed off a step.

"Oh, I'm doing more than just applying! I'm accusing!"

"Yeah, but as always you're going after the wrong guy." That stopped everyone in their tracks. As one, every person in the room turned to look at Simon Williams. Wonder Man still had his back to the room, staring out over the cityscape. "It wasn't Spider-Man who sent Cap the file."

Maria Hill quietly withdrew her pistol from its holster. She didn't quite direct it at Wonder Man's back. "What are you saying?"

"I'm confessing, Agent Hill." Wonder Man turned to look over his shoulder. "It wasn't Spider-Man, it was me." He turned toward the windows once more, seeming to ignore her.

Ares, who'd been leaning in a corner up until this point, laughed. "Oh, this is just classic. How entertaining you little people are."

Now Hill's weapon was pointed at Wonder Man. "Simon Williams, by authority of -"

"Oh stow it, Hill. I don't think I'm going to be letting you arrest me today." And with that, Wonder Man hauled back a fist and knocked the reinforced glass in the window out of its framing. It came out as one solid piece, falling swiftly toward the earth. Wonder Man leapt out into space after it.

Hill ran to the window, firing at the fleeing Wonder Man the entire time. It had all the effect she expected it to. That is, no effect at all. She turned back toward the room and screamed, "Don't just stand there! Someone get him!"

Stark nodded. "Spider Man, Wasp, Ares, Yellowjacket. Get on it. Ares meet them at ground level. Bring Simon back. Try not to hurt him too badly." Ares, Wasp and Yellowjacket took off out of the open window-frame.

Spider-Man stood rooted to the spot for a moment, then shook his head. "This situation just keeps getting better and better." And then he, too, was out through the hole in the building.

Stark turned toward Hill. "There. Satisfied?"

"If they don't catch him, I'll have your ass in a sling."

"Really? Well..." Stark considered the threat for a moment. "Well, in that case I hope your lawyers are better than my lawyers. See yourself out, Agent Hill."

xxxXXxxxx

Xander snuck back into the bedroom and closed it behind her, hoping to not wake Louise. When Xander turned, everything stopped. Louise was sitting up on the bed, lit only by a small lamp on the far end-table. The shadow and light played across her face and body in a way that struck Xander hard.

"Oh!" Xander said. "Um..." She suddenly felt all goosebumpy.

"Hey. Did you get all the talking done?"

Xander nodded. For some reason her throat wasn't working.

Louise smiled. "I guess we're hiding out here for a while then?"

Xander nodded again. "Hiding. Yeah."

Louise moved across the room to stand directly in front of Xander, whose expression betrayed an utter delighted confusion. Very gently, Louise reached out and took Xander's wrist and then, pulling it up, slowly rubbed the back of Xander's hand over her cheek.

Xander didn't resist. Indeed, she closed her eyes to concentrate on the sensation.

"You're cold." Louise said.

"You're... you're really not." Xander replied. "You're... uh... you're hot."

Xander opened her eyes and took in Louise's face. Louise's mouth was open, just a little, and the small, pink tip of her tongue was touching her top lip. The corners of her mouth were lifted in a wry grin.

"I'm hot... why Alex, whatever are you referring to?" Louise moved closer and took Xander's hands. "Dance with me."

"Ah," Xander says. "There's no music."

Louise put a finger to Xander's lips and made a shhh sound. "Doesn't matter. Dance with me. Please."

The girl once again took Xander's hands and they began moving together to a music only they could hear.

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note:** If you recognize it, it likely belongs to DC Comics, Marvel Comics, or Mutant Enemy. If you don't, its likely mine.


	12. First Person, Present

**First Person, Present**

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note:** This chapter is a bit different from the others. In the first place, I wrote it as an exercise in First Person, Present Tense. In the second case, one of my friends (a writer of Harry Potter fanfic) dared me to man up and stop avoiding sex scenes in my stories. She also bet me $50 I wouldn't go through with it and write one. She now owes me $50. I told you, its not that I can't, its that I generally don't see the need.

xxxXXXxxx

_"Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic is what makes heroes." - Benjamin Disraeli_

xxxXXXxxx

**Simon Peter Williams:**

Its one thing to know you're invulnerable and that you won't be hurt from a twenty story fall. Its another thing entirely to actually put yourself in a position where you have to test whether or not its true. There's a part of me, a small part I've never admitted actually exists, that hopes that this time I won't shrug it off.

Immortality sucks, and anyone who thinks otherwise has never been immortal.

The glass falls ahead of me. Or below me, I guess I should say. It will hit a fraction of a second before I will. Probably wreck the entrance garden. Oh well... this is why the tower has a huge maintenance staff. Behind me I hear shouting. Sounds like Hank and Jan. I don't bother looking. In a few seconds whoever got sent after me will be on the ground with me.

If I was Tony I'd have sent Ares and the Spider for muscle and Jan and Hank for recon. Knowing Hank like I do, I know he's going to miss the fact that he's there to keep track of me, and will move in to engage close. That's fine. I can take Hank Pym out with one hand tied behind my back. Spider-Man on the other hand has the fastest reaction time I have ever seen on anyone who wasn't Pietro Maximoff. Its one of the things that's kept him alive all these years; that and a pair of nuts larger than the wheels on a corvette.

Peter can't hurt me, but he can immobilize me with those webs of his. They're strong. I can tear through them, but even so its like wading through tar. And even though he can't out-punch me, I saw him grab the Rhino by the leg with his webbing. He turned the big galoot into a paddle-ball that way.

I'd really prefer not to be turned into a paddle ball.

Ares is going to be a problem. A big problem. He's as strong as I am and has forgotten more about fighting than me and thirty other guys will ever learn. Comes part of the god of war package.

I watch the garden rushing up to meet me, and idly note that I'm about to de-zen the Japanese section. Can't be helped. Too bad. I liked eating lunch there sometimes.

xxxXXXxxx

**Alexandra Lavelle Harris:**

I can't hear it, but the music I am dancing to thrums through me. The deep bass vibrato that makes everything around you shake just a little. It reverberates through my bones and my skin and my muscle. When did it start? Where is it playing? I have no idea and at this point I really couldn t much care. I close my eyes and lean into her. She let's my hands go and wraps her arms around me.

She is so tiny and delicate.

I think she can hear it too. Our movements are perfectly coordinated as we move in circles. Neither one of us is leading this dance. We're just... dancing.

Her body is next to mine as we turn and move. She said I was cold. It was a deep, penetrating cold, built on fear and insecurity. It had wrapped itself around the core of my being like a fist. But she's here, pressed up against me, and she is so warm and perfect, and the ice that held me in its grasp melts away until I, too, feel warm.

Without breaking our rhythm I give her a soft kiss on her neck. She doesn't say anything, but I can feel her smiling, and her arms tighten around me. So I do it again. And again. A trail of small kisses along her throat. Each lands in time with the music that only we can hear. Step. Kiss. Step. Kiss. Turn. Kiss. And with every kiss she pulls me closer to her.

Though to be honest there's not much closer for us to be to one another.

Step. Kiss. Move. Kiss. Turn. Kiss. Sway. Kiss.

I lift her gently, holding her like I would a baby, and she rests her head on my shoulder. I can't see her face, but I know she's still smiling. Sitting in my arms, we dance.

xxxXXXxxx

**Peter Benjamin Parker:**

I wish someone would explain how all this happened. I didn't join the Avengers to become a member of the gestapo. But now, SHIELD says 'Jump' and we're in the air before anyone asks how high. How did it all go so wrong?

And now I'm running a friend down because the leader of SHIELD says he's a traitor. _A traitor._ Not a person who disagrees with us , but a traitor. If you're not with us, you're against us. Yeah, that's a mindset that always works out well.

I leap out into empty space, following my teammates downward after Wonder Man. I use the face of the building to slow my fall. Below me, Simon slams into the ground, surrounded by the shattered remains of the window. He craters, then leaps up and runs. Got to give him this, he has the stop-start acceleration of a sports car. By the time I get to the ground, he's going to be moving a good fifty, maybe sixty miles an hour.

Hank is in a power dive, trying to get to Simon before Simon gets up to full speed. Janet is angling off, obviously trying to keep track of Simon rather than trying to stop him. And there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop him. They're just not powerful enough.

Ares slams into the same spot Simon landed in, deepening the crater. He, too, takes off at top speed, mere seconds behind Simon. I alter my fall by bracing my feet against the wall and kicking off. I send a web-line to a nearby building and begin my swing.

I have no idea what to do. I don't want to hunt my friend.

xxxXXXxxx

**Alexandra Lavelle Harris:**

"This was a good idea." She whispers it in my ear. It causes little electric jolts all along my skin.

"Huh?" I reply, instantly regretting it. My brain has been shut down for the duration. Cruising on autopilot, enjoying the feel of her.

"I said, this was a good idea." Again the whisper. Again the electric shocks. Dancing. Just us.

She lowers her legs to the floor and turns around into my embrace. I wrap my arms around her and she pulls me in. "There. Now we're warm and cozy."

"Warm and cozy is nice." I lean my chin onto the top of her head and hold her. We stand that way a moment and she starts humming. I'm not sure exactly what she is humming, so I can't tell you what the song is. I'm concentrating on other things. Much more important things. I know the humming is there, though, and its perfect. And we're dancing again.

The room isn't that big. The bed takes up over half the floor space, and then there's the wardrobe, the dresser, the end-table, a sideboard, a free-standing mirror. But as we move we never once bump into anything, or have to curtail our movements. I barely noticed our surroundings. I don't think I could even feel the rug under our feet.

It takes me a moment to realize that the reason I can't feel the rug is that we're no longer touching the floor. She stops humming and just like that, just as easy as a drifting dandelion seed, we settle back to earth. Louise steps away, and suddenly I'm no longer sure precisely where I am in the room. We're still standing in front of each other, and I still have my hands on her hips, but I feel lost suddenly.

She's gently holding my arms and looking at me with that funny little half-smile of hers. Her head is tilted, just a little, to the right. She's looking at me as if she's expecting me to say something.

I have absolutely no idea what to say. "Kiss me," I finally ask. Oh, very smooth, Xander.

"I thought you'd never ask," she whispers back. Her arms raise to my neck and she steps forward on her toes. A kiss. She gives me a kiss. We've kissed before, but this kiss is on a whole other level, and if this is what the best kisses are going to be like, I'm going to have to start demanding them on a more regular basis.

The mechanics of the kiss are simple enough. Our lips meet. Her lips are soft and giving, a girl's lips. My lips... I don't know, but I suspect my lips are soft for the same reason: girl's lips. They sort of squish together. Very squishy things, lips.

But I'm not paying attention to that. I'm paying attention to everything else. The kiss isn't deep; its just soft. Off an on. On and off. Over and over. Her hands move from behind my neck and she works her fingers through my hair. I have a momentary fear; in some continuities, Kryptonian hair acts like razor wire; not all of them to be sure. _Which one am I from?_

But she doesn't stop moving her fingers, so I stop worrying. She moves her fingers on my scalp. Uh... I think... I think I now know... oh! Yeah... she has all night to stop doing that.

XxxXXXxxx

**Simon Peter Williams:**

I hit the ground hard and roll as best I can to my feet. The crater I made isn't that deep, but its certainly deep enough for inconvenience. A quick jump and I'm sprinting down West 59th Street as quickly as I can. I risk a look behind me; it slows me down, but now I know where I stand. Hank's about to try a strafing run, Janet is doing overwatch, and Ares is falling from the sky right into my crater. Don't see anyone else behind me.

I turn just in time to hurdle a city bus. I seriously hope I don't get someone hurt here; weaving in and out of traffic is fun, but I can hear brakes screeching and horns being plied behind me. Haven't heard glass breaking yet, thank God. But I figure its only a matter of time.

I'm going to try and lose them in the park. I know where Cap's safe house is in the city; if I can get there without any of them realizing where I'm going , all the better.

Hank is almost on me before I see him coming. He's managed to get ahead of me and is doubling around, but I spot him. The problem of wearing bright yellow at night; in certain lighting it shows up like you're wearing a spotlight.

I brace myself. The Yellowjacket's sting hits, but doesn't knock me too off balance. I take moment, time it just right... and manage to knock him through the side window of a car. That should slow him down for now.

Another quick glance behind me. I can't see Janet anymore, but Ares is hopping over cars like he's playing hopscotch. He's got a grin on his face like he's enjoying this.

It would be very bad if he caught up to me.

xxxXXXxxx

**Alexandra Lavelle Harris:**

She nuzzles me as our lips meet again, once more in... fuck it, who's counting? She nuzzles me, her cheek moving against mine, like she's asking for... mmmmm... permission. Why does she feel she needs to ask?

I open my mouth slightly. A bare sliver of open space. It's enough. Her tongue passes over my teeth, meeting mine.

_Ah._

She tastes slightly of mint and maple and cigarette smoke.

Again the mechanics... oh to hell with it. I get it now. Who the hell cares?

_Wow!_

I link my hands behind her and pull her even closer. Careful. Very careful. I don't want to break the kiss. Or her back.

I'm going to drink this up. I'm going to drink her up forever and ever...

She takes a step back, breaking the kiss and breaking my hold and stares me in the eye for an absolute eternity. Stars are born, burn, and die in the length of that gaze.

And without warning, she leans forward, making a _"boop_" noise, and licks me on the end of my nose.

**xxxXXXxxx**

**Peter Benjamin Parker:**

I manage to angle my descent just perfectly; I'm lined up precisely where I need to be, and just high enough that Simon can't see me when he occasionally checks his six.

Ares is hot on his tail. The war god can do everything Simon can do, plus he's got thousands of years of experience and an inherent knowledge of how to beat any opponent. I spot Hank. The yellow jammies make that especially easy. But I can't see where Janet went. I know she's airborne, but is not likely to attack Simon directly unless its absolutely necessary. She knows she's not likely to hurt him.

My web-line takes me up and over a roof and I land quickly, only to kick off again. I still have no idea what I'm going to do when I catch up to Simon. This entire situation is bad. We should never have gone after that girl. Its... its bad. I know, I'm repeating myself, but bad is the best word I can think of to describe it.

I wish I could talk to my wife. I'm... I'm thinking about doing something, and that something will change everything for my entire family. I don't know if I can go through with it.

Up ahead, something's happened. Take my eyes off the prize for just a second, and suddenly things change. Hank Pym's been knocked into a car, without the benefit of opening the window first.

Time to close it up. One way or another, this will be over soon.

_I wish I could talk to my wife._

xxxXXXxxx

**Alexandra Lavelle Harris:**

Louise... she... she... she licked me on the end of my nose!

I growl at her, and Louise shrieks like a little kid. She tries to dive around the bed but I'm faster. Much faster. I'm in the spot where she was aiming at before her brain registers I have moved. She can't stop herself, and runs right into my arms. When it finally registers on her that I've gone from there to here, she shrieks again and tries to backpedal, for all the good that it does her.

I fall back on the bed, springs groaning under me. I've pulled her over with me; she's on top. I know how much I weigh and I don't want to break anything. It takes a moment for her to realize that being on top means that she's in charge. Whatever happens now, its all up to her.

I smile into her eyes, and reach up to stroke her chin with my fingers. Louise sighs a little, then lowers her head until it is pillowed between my breasts. I curl my arms around her head and hold her there, kissing the top of her head.

"Did I scare you," I ask.

She shakes her head in the negative, and given where her head is right now, I have to admit that its a fun and interesting experience.

"Nope," I hear her reply. Its muffled. The vibration of her voice in my flesh is also a fun and interesting experience.

"You sure?"

Now she's nodding. Again, fun and interesting.

I find myself searching for stupid questions I can ask, just so she keeps doing the fun and interesting things. "You know, Louise, this is going to sound silly, but..."

Without warning she moves her head slightly and kisses my throat. I have to grit my teeth at the feeling that jolts up and down my spine. I am so tweaked right now I can barely think. Louise pushes herself upward on one elbow, resting it on my arm, knowing it won't hurt no matter how hard her elbow digs in.

"Don't worry about being silly. Nothing wrong with silly. The other hand, the one not supporting her head, trails down my stomach, over my breasts, down my sides. That roving hand stops just at my belt level on my stomach, where my shirt has bunched upward just a bit and exposed a bare strip of skin.

I'm suddenly hyper-aware of my shirt.

Louise sits up and straddles my hips. Her hands move over my belly and I am shocked at how good that feels. My only previous experience with anyone touching me there was being tickled, and that felt entirely different than this.

And then out of the blue, she stops.

xxxXXXxxx

**Simon Peter Williams:**

Okay, I just spotted Parker leaping off a roof. It looks like he's maneuvering to cut me off while Ares herds me to where they want me. The park is only a few blocks ahead, but I don't think I'm going to make it.

I dodge around an oncoming truck and vault over a compact car, and hit an open stretch of the road when it happens. A taught steel wire wraps itself around my legs, weighted at either end. Ares' work, this thing. He found his shot and took it and I'm ashamed to say I never saw it coming. I fall and roll, trying to get out of the way of traffic so I don't cause any crashes.

Ares slows to a walk and approaches. He smiles at me, but with war gods the smile never reaches their eyes. "It was a good chase. I had fun. But now the fun's over," he calls.

Janet suddenly appears, hovering over me just out of reach. "Simon, give it up. We're going to take you back to the tower." Behind her and Ares, I see Pete land in a crouch, and I know its over.

I _growl_ at them. Really, growl. I'll be damned if I'm getting tossed in the Gulag without a fight. I reach down quickly, trying to get my legs free before Ares can cross the last twenty yards to me.

I don't see it when Spider-Man decides to move.

xxxXXXxxx

**Alexandra Lavelle Harris:**

Louise takes my hands in her own and kisses my palms. "You have such soft hands," she whispers to me. She looks predatory, and I'm amused to find myself a bit unnerved by it.

"Touch me," she says. Its the most terrifying and exciting thing anyone's ever said to me. My hands move from her own and make their way up her arms, sliding over the fabric of her dress toward her own belly, a copy of the caresses she was giving me just a moment before.

"No, Alex..." her tone is urgent. "Touch me!"

She guides my hands with hers as she moves them back to her shoulders and slides them under the straps that have been holding her sun dress on. She moves my hands, pushing the straps off her shoulders and down her arms. The dress is pulled along with them.

In a moment, I can see her upper body in all its glory. I swallow, hard. I'd seen her naked before, of course, but given my lack of experience, any new event was exciting. I had half-been convinced I wouldn't ever be allowed to play in this particular playground again.

She guides my hands one last time. "Touch me here."

xxxXXXxxx

Almost more quickly than I can follow, Spider-Man lunged forward. The Wasp is suddenly covered in gray-white ooze that hardens swiftly. Unable to fly, she drops almost on top of me. I catch her gently in one hand.

I have no idea why Pete is changing sides. I'm only glad that he did.

"Damn it, Simon! Put me down and help me get out of this before things get too out of hand!"

I shake my head at her, but I do put her down on the sidewalk. "Sorry, Janet. Its already out of hand." As I finish untangling my legs I watch Spider-Man square off against the God of War.

She starts calling the tower. Peter and I don't have long if we're both going to get away.

Spider-man's surprise attack had been pretty complete. Jan was taken out immediately so Pete could concentrate on Ares. But concentrating on Ares and taking Ares down were two very different things. Peter side-stepped a punch that could have pulped his head had it connected, but was unable to return the favor. He dodged three more times, then leaped away to gain room. Ares ducked under a web-line to toss another bolo, this time at Peter, but Ares aim was no better than the wall-crawler s.

But I can see it. Ares' attacks are missing, but they're coming closer and closer to Peter as time goes by. The God of War is getting the wall-crawler s measure. Time for me to intervene.

Ares would be able to counter anything I did close in, but I had to distract him. With that in mind, I picked up a shitty little Honda civic and threw it at him. Stark would replace it; he had insurance worked out through his company to cover this sort of thing.

I hope.

Ares turns in time to see the car coming and ducks... and Spider-Man with his lightning reflexes is all over him. Ares punches at the Spider and not only does he miss, but the kid manages to glue Ares hand to a car. Another punch, and Ares is stuck to the street. And so it goes. Within seconds, Ares is as wrapped up as Janet.

It won't hold long, but it will let us get away. Pete grabs me and suddenly we're airborne, swinging past buildings almost as fast as I can run. "I'm heading to get my family and then get the hell out of town. Where can I drop you off?"

"No. That's not what we're going to talk about. First, you're going to tell me why."

Spider-Man is quiet for a long, long time. When he finally speaks, its almost too quiet to hear. "I never had a problem working with SHIELD. I think some training and control will do superheroes some good. But tossing people who don't agree in the Negative Zone? Making some poor kid... a victim... into one of the Most Wanted for no damned reason I can think of. Not to mention what happened to Bill Foster. I just..."

He was quiet for a long while. Then he said, "I think Tony's in way over his head and has no idea he's drowning."

Yeah, that sounded about right. I give the kid an address. When he dropped me off I shook his hand and wished him luck. I hope he can escape like he wants to.

Hill is going to freak out. I wish I could be there to see it.

xxxXXXxxx

**Alexandra Lavelle Harris:**

Oh, God!

I force myself not to throw my head back. I force myself to not start moaning. I force myself to keep my eyes open. I do not want my eyes to close. I want to watch everything Louise is doing to me.

I'm hungry for her.

She puts her hands on my breasts and its like my strength, my colossal, titanic strength, the strength is just gone. I think my brain is going to explode. Louise's fingers squeeze, just a little. Just hard enough for me to feel it, just soft enough for it to be felt past my natural invulnerability.

A particular jolt of electricity passes through me and I buck, just once, but its enough to toss her forward, off-balance, onto my chest. I'm immediately apologizing, whispering that I'm sorry over and over again, trying to reassure myself even more than her that I don't want to hurt her.

Louise smiled. "Its okay, Alex. I'm okay. Never better."

"Are you sure?"

She manages to lift herself up again. "Alex, it was a good thing. Trust me. A very good thing. But," her grin became even more mischievous than it was normally. "I think if we were to stop right now, it would be a bad, bad thing."

She grabs my hands again, but I push them aside. This time, I'm going to do it on my own. My fingers are on her breasts again, and I just hold them, moving my thumbs in small concentric circles. I push a little, moving her backward so I can sit up slowly, and when I'm upright I bring her close to kiss her again, all the while keeping my hands where they are.

Louise breaks the kiss and moves her mouth along my cheek until she reaches my ear. She captured my earlobe and nibbled at it. I would never admit to her that while I appreciated the effort, I barely felt it. The sensation of her breath on my ear, though, made up for her not being able to bite me hard enough for me to feel it.

Louise sucks on my earlobe, then whispers, "You are still dressed. Her hands trail down my sides and grasp my shirt. I try to lean back to make it easier for her, but she stops me, shaking her head. Her eyes never leave mine as the shirt is pulled up over my head and off of my arms.

Our gaze finally breaks as she looks down at my brassiere. Louise giggles for a minute. I remember how much trouble I had hooking the thing, and open my mouth to give her instruction. A finger on my lips stops me from saying anything; before I can blink the bra is open and gone the way of the shirt.

She brings her palms down, over the rise of my flesh and across my nipples. I smile at her, and with one hand she lifts one my breasts to her mouth...

"I... ara... ca... nk... but... oh, God."

Wow!

_Wow!_

Louise lets me go and I gasp. The sound causes her to smile even wider. She shimmies the dress up and over her head, and I discover she'd abandoned her underwear before she began this. Stay still, she orders, and crawls down my legs. My underwear are dragged off with her, and there I am, naked before her.

I am completely under her control at this point.

She lays down on the bed next to me, head propped up on one elbow. She crooks a finger at me and whispers, "C'mere."

Have you ever noticed that when women hug, they bend over and keep some space away from one another? I think they do that so that their tits never touch. Louise and I embrace, not caring in the least about the physical contact as our nipples rub together and for some reason I can't get the fact that women lean away from each other when they hug out of my head.

Granted I don't think about it for long. She moves down my body, using her tongue. First on my neck, then on the swell of my breasts, then my nipples, and then lower. And lower. And lower, until she reaches what she wants.

Louise knows what she wants.

Subtlety, grace, patience... you know, I'm not sure I want to play those games anymore. I don't want to play any games. I want to be with my lover in the most intense way I can. My lover. No one else's. You can't have any, because she's mine.

We're kissing and my hands are moving and I can feel her body against mine. Everything feels right. It clicks into absolute focus. The room, Louise, me, the bed, our utter lack of clothing.

I hope the walls are thick enough to muffle our sounds, because we're making them now. I can't make myself care about who might be overhearing us. They aren't important right now. Just Louise. _**LOUISE!**_ Being with her is important. I need her. Its critical, because I need her. I've got nothing else to hold onto but her, and I am never letting her go.

Wait... she let me go. She stopped. I don't want her to stop.

"Louise, damn it. That's not fair." I realize I sound whiney. And out of breath. Very out of breath.

She moves up so we're face-to-face and kisses me. There's a strange taste on her lips and on her tongue and I realize suddenly that the strange taste is me.

"Give me your hand," she says. She holds up her own, and I put my hand in hers. Our fingers intertwine and she tugs my hand downward, slowly. My hand reaches its intended target and she moves it the way she wants me to move it. When she's confident I know what she wants, she begins doing the same thing to me.

I bite back a sound. She isn't quite as successful at remaining quiet, and I smile in victory. She's always been vocal; she likes to talk. Why should it be different during sex?

Can't think. Don't try. Just... instinct. And... she's... find her mouth. Kiss her. Her lips. Where are her lips, kiss me Louise... and more... move... more... I stop myself from grinding into her because I'm afraid to hurt her and it takes all the control I have to not...

I can feel the blankets move as her other hand clenches into a fistful of fabric.

xxxXXXxxx

**Veranke:**

I do not know how much longer I can put up with the smell of living in such close proximity to humans. Their skin is constantly giving off new biochemical cues that are meaningless to me as anything but a fetid stink. I feel saturated by it. I can taste the foul odor in my mouth every time I am near a human, and every time I do I fear I have become somehow infected by it.

I am only now becoming aware, however, that this new human female, Harris, is different. She, too, is giving off biochemical cues, but they are not the same. There is something different about them. I have not been able to figure out just what it is, but the stink she emits is closer to that of the Strontia than the Humans. But that is ridiculous. What would a Strontian be doing on this planet? And besides, Harris is the wrong color.

But it makes me worry. After bathing in the chlorine/water mix, just after local nightfall. The encounter with Harris... she looked at me as if she could see me. The real me. It would be very, very bad if she knew who I actually was.

Has she told anyone? Did she recognize me at all? Or was she just rude, as all Humans are, and stared because she is an uncouth child?

I may have to dispose of her. She cannot be allowed to interfere in our Holy Crusade.

XxxXXXxxx

**Alexandra Lavelle Harris:**

I stand in front of the large bay window. Its open and a strong, cool breeze is blowing from Spanish Harbor. It smells of ocean, and static electricity, and rain. I can hear the waves hitting the shore nearby, and its a peaceful sound.

The breeze feels good. I'm all hot and sweaty, but that's okay. The air feels wonderful. I feel... complete. Looking out at the sky, I can see a wall of clouds moving in. It will rain soon. That's okay. I can still see the stars through the clouds.

Somewhere down the road, at another house, there's a party going on. If I listen I can hear voices talking about the beach and the weather and music and sex and business and... and... and why don't they ever get tired of hearing that same sucky song over and over again? Seriously? I don't care what the word "poe-poe-zow" or whatever is it means in Portguese, and I think I'm going to pass on the Brazilian Booty for the rest of my life.

Its so bad that I'm thinking of flying over real quick and killing that sound system. I can do that. It would be easy.

But I shouldn't. No matter how badly that damned song is ruining my post-sex zen ocean breeze experience, I can't risk it.

Louise is asleep behind me. I love how she snores, not in that loud obnoxious way, but that cute way that cute girls have. The bed's a hot mess, and I am fairly sure we owe Delaney a new set of sheets because I disinctly remember ripping through them earlier. Though it might be the mattress.

The covers are half-off the bed, but Louise looks like an angel.

I feel at peace. For now at least, nothing bad is happening.

Except for that damned song...

xxxXXXxxx

**Author's Note the Second:** If you see something you recognize, it almost certainly belongs to DC Comics, Marvel Comics, or Mutant Enemy. If you don't recognize it, it belongs to me.

**Author's Note the Third:** Thanks for the heads-up about being mentioned on TV Tropes in their Marvel Universe Fanfic Recommendations Page. To answer your question, no I have no intention of creating a page for this story. If someone else wants to do it, feel free, but I don't play over on TV Tropes because I don't get along with the guy who runs the place.


	13. Announcement

**Author's Note:** After a couple of long talks with a pair of Joe's (Hundredaire here on TtH and Vasquez over on FF.N), I became convinced that a deep and intense restructuring and rewrite of this story was drastically necessary. This is that rewrite. Consider the "original" _Origin Story_ to be abandoned in favor of that one.


End file.
